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SHELLPROOF MACK 



Throwing the Mills Bomb 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

An American s 
fighting story 



BY 

ARTHUR MACK 

LATE OF THE 2 3D BATTALION, LONDON REGIMENT, 
H. M. IMPERIAL ARMY 



ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 




BOSTON 
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY 



PUBLISHERS 



>% 



Copyright, 191 8 

By small, MAYNARD & COMPANY 
(Incorporated) 



MAY -8 I9!8 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



©GLA494913 

4 ( 3' 



r 



i 



TO 
MRS. ROSE ESCOTT NORTH 

East Leake, Nottingham, England 

Who adopted mc as a friendless soldier and wrote me the 

letters of a mother to a son, letters which cheered 

and made endurable many a ch.eerless day and 

night upon the battle fields of France, 

T/iis jQju/e 'Book is T)edicated 



FOREWORD 

The things that are set down here are written 
from the standpoint of the plain private soldier, 
— one who went as a volunteer, it is true, but 
who hated the whole vile business of war as 
any private soldier must, and who was glad 
when his work was done. 

If this book has any value it is because it is 
a true telling of the things that are, over there, 
and because it is without what the British 
Tommy calls "camouflage." 

This book lacks, no doubt, everything that 
would be put into such a story by a professional 
writer, — the briUiancy of expression and the 
vividness of narrative; but if it is without those 
things it is because it is the tale of a soldier 
and not of a war correspondent. 

A. M. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. Boyhood 3 

II. College Lite 8 

III. On the Stage 13 

IV. Training 19 

V. First Night in the Trenches ... 26 

VI. Over the Top on the First of Jl^ly 40 

VII. Mascots 49 

VIII. Wounds 56 

IX. My Nickname and How I Got It . 67 

X. Rehearsal 89 

XI. Messines Ridge 113 

XII. Discipline 136 

XIII. HOLLEBEKE 142 

XIV. Rest i6o 

XV. Back to the Front 167 

XVI. Taking the Pill-Boxes 178 

XVII. Gassed 187 

XVIII. Shells and Slang . 209 

XIX. Back to Blighty . 216 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Throwing the Mills Bomb Frontispiece J 

Identification Discs Worn by the Author dur- 
ing His Service i6 ^ 

Throwing a Bomb from the Prone Position . . 46 i^ 

A Duphcate of the German Trenches was laid 
out in a Mile-Square Field, with every De- 
tail exactly as We would find It when We 
went " Over the Top " 96^ 

Open Fighting at Messines Ridge 120 

German Translation of President Wilson's War 

Message of April 2, 1917 138- 

Rest. That was It. The Only Thing Lacking 

was a Chance to Sleep in a Bed 166 

A Short Rest in an Advance 184 

Here are the Trophies — a German Bomb and a 

German Helmet 212 ■ ,, 

The Author's Certificate of Discharge .... 222 ' 



SHELLPROOF MACK 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

CHAPTER I 
Boyhood 

Once, when I was in training in England, a 
Cockney sergeant came up to me and said: 

"Hi sye, rook, wot^s yer number?" 

Mine was a high one and I started to give it 
to him slow, "One — seven — four — " like 
that. He evidently thought I was trying to 
have him on and got very shirty over it. 

"Ow," says he, "so yer one o' them blinkin', 
swankin' Yanks, are yer?" 

That riled me and I came back. 

"That's what I am and I can back it up." 

"Can, can yer? Let's see yer," he invited. 

With that I poked him on the nose. That 
was a crime of course and I was on the mat with 

3 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the company commander the next day. I 
might have got a lot of wholesome punishment 
for it and ought to have; but I did n't. The 
officer was a decent fellow. 

" What are you?" he asked. " Irish?" 

^'Partly," I answered. " But mostly Scotch." 

"Ah," he said, "that accounts for it. The 

Scotch are half argument and half fight. I'm 

part Scotch myself." And with that he gave me 

a light punishment. 

I have thought since that that officer knew 
what he was talking about. It's the little bit 
of Scotch in me that has influenced me many a 
time through life. 

I was bom in New York and was christened 
Arthur James McKay. I retained that name 
until I went into the theatrical profession in 
1906, when I took the name of Arthur Mack, the 
label I wore when I enlisted in the British 
Army. But I am getting ahead of my story. 

When I was a small boy my people moved 
to Northampton, Massachusetts, which was 

4 



BOYHOOD 

home until I struck out into the world for 
myself. 

My boyhood was pretty much like that of 
any other American youngster. I was fond 
of all outdoor sports except swimming and I 
would drown to-day in six feet of water, — or 
less. 

In spite of my athletic tendencies I was 
supposed to be not very strong and the fact 
that I was always small added to the impression. 
So it happened that my family had it all planned 
that I was to have a very elaborate education 
and go into the priesthood. 

Right there the Scotch in me asserted itself. 
Because somebody wanted me to be one thing 
I straightway decided that I wanted to be the 
opposite. I settled it in my own mind that I 
was going to be a soldier. I fancy that if the 
folks had wanted me to go to West Point I 
would have insisted upon a profession. 

Anyhow, I flatly refused to study in the 
high school and left. The year following I did 

5 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

consent to go to Williston Academy, where I 
devoted more time to athletics than to anything 
else and made a fair reputation as a runner. I 
ran fast enough to get beaten against such men 
as Schick, Hubbard, Piper Donovan and Bart 
Sullivan. 

I did fairly well in my studies at Williston 
and after one year took the examinations for 
Holy Cross and Norwich University, both of 
which I passed. I took the exams for Holy 
Cross to please my parents; but I knew where 
I was going. Norwich had, and I think still 
has, the reputation of being one of the finest 
military schools in the country. I still had 
soldiering on the brain. 

During the summer before entering Norwich 
I became a professional runner under an as- 
sumed name and was a member of the W. A. 
Bailey Hose Team which made a world's record 
for the 300 yards. Hose-team running in those 
days was a very popular sport in the western 
part of the State. I competed a good many 

6 



BOYHOOD 

times on this team that summer and was speedy 
on my feet. 

More than once during the two years I was 
in France I looked back upon those footracing 
days and wished that I could run as fast with 
ninety pounds of equipment on my back. 



CHAPTER II 

College Life 

In the fall of 1903 I entered Norwich Uni- 
versity. On arrival at Northfield I happened 
to run on to an old chum, one Biddy Burnett, 
a sophomore. He put me up to all the hazing 
dodges that I might expect and as a consequence 
I got off easy on that score. The hazing at 
Norwich was as bad in those days as it was at 
West Point and the first year men sure were 
disciplined by the upper classmen. I was 
fortunate in looking very much like a former 
student named Skinny Eaton who had been 
extremely popular. I was nicknamed Skinny 
Eaton No. 2 and afterward became Skinny 
McKay. 

Life at Norwich was one of stiff discipline. 
We had to wear a uniform all the time. The 

8 



COLLEGE LIFE 

life was as regular as that in the British Army. 
I took to it like a duck to water. I fancy the 
principal reason that I liked discipline was 
that it was so much fun to break the rules 
without getting caught. I got to be a past 
master in the art. 

I was the smallest man in the college, but 
my athletic reputation had preceded me and 
I was elected manager and coach of the Fresh- 
man basket ball team. I put out a cracker- 
jack of a team and defeated the varsity so badly 
that we finished the varsity schedule. 

Along in the spring we had some diphtheria 
in the college and about fifty men were quaran- 
tined on the upper floor of the barracks. The 
poor fellows were suffering for beer or thought 
they were. They couldn't get out, so they 
sent for me and told me their troubles from the 
window. I got a suit-case and went to town, 
filled it with beer, hired a rig, drove back and 
tied the load to the end of the fire-escape rope 
that had been lowered from the barracks. 

9 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

The celebration led to an investigation and 
of course I was convicted. I was barred from 
athletics for a year. 

This was a good thing, for I dug in on study 
and learned a lot that came in handy afterward 
in the British Army. I learned to take care of 
myself physically, a thing that is essential to a 
good soldier and that so few soldiers ever do 
learn thoroughly. Every man had to care for 
his own room and make his own bed, besides 
keeping his equipment clean and well polished. 

On Saturday we had to wash the windows 
and scrub the floors and paint, for Sunday in- 
spection by the commandant, a United States 
Army ofhcer. At the time I remember that I 
used to hate that scrubbing and would try 
every possible way to get out of it; but it was 
no go. Everybody had to do his bit. 

Our military duties consisted of theoretical 
artillery work, practical infantry and cavalry 
training and military science. I became pretty 
solidly groimded in discipline and infantry work 

lO 



COLLEGE LIFE 

in general and was on the way to becoming a 
real soldier. In fact I thought seriously of try- 
ing for a West Point appointment. 

In my third year in college I was reinstated 
in athletics and was manager of the baseball 
team. I got into more trouble, incidentally, 
though nothing very serious, and gradually 
began to get the notion that I was fed up on 
soldiering. It is a notion that comes to a man 
in the army often. And it almost always gets 
a boy in a military school. The difference is 
that he can't get out of the army when he gets 
temperamental, — that is, not without desert- 
ing and he does n't want to take any chances 
of getting shot. He can get out of a military 
school and he frequently does. I did. 

The thing that finally decided me to leave 
college was this. I had become a member of 
the Town Dramatic Club and liked it. The 
fact is that about four times on the stage as 
an amateur made me think I was cut out for 
another Henry Irving. I was stage-struck for 

II 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

further orders. And so at the end of my third 
year I let the military life go a-glimmering. I 
quit cold and came to Boston where I studied 
for a while at the Colonial Dramatic School. 



12 



CHAPTER III 
On the Stage 

My first professional appearance on the stage 
was with the old Castle Square Company. 
Howard Hansell and Lillian Kemble were in 
the leads. Mary Young and John Craig were 
also in the company and the piece was "Soldiers 
of Fortime." I finished out the season there 
and the next fall was out on the road with a 
second-rate stock company playing the South. 
At least we started to play the South. 

The show blew up in Norfolk, Virginia. We 
had known it was coming and a fellow named 
Bean and myself had been dickering with 
Charles E. Blaney by mail. The day we closed 
we had a letter from Blaney with the offer of 
the necessary job. Bean and I were to join 
one of the Blaney road companies at Richmond 
two weeks later. 

13 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

In the meantime Richmond was a long, long 
way from Norfolk and we were nearly broke. 
I had just fifty cents; Bean had an old silver 
watch and no cash whatever. We talked it over 
and decided that the only thing to do was to 
jump a freight. 

Hoboing was considerably out of our line 
but we had heard that it was easy enough. So 
we shipped the tnmks by express and sneaked 
down to the railroad yards. Along in the 
evening we stowed on a flat car of lumber and 
some time along towards morning she pulled 
out. We travelled on that freight, I suppose, 
about ten miles. When it got pretty light a 
hostile brakeman came along and routed us 
out. 

"Hit the grit, you 'boes," says he. "Hit the 
grit and be quick about it.'' 

"Wait until we make the next stop," I sug- 
gested. 

"Stop me eye," said he. "Hit the grit and 
do it now." He had a coupling-pin in his hand 

14 



ON THE STAGE 

and looked like using it, so we jumped. I did n't 
get the cinders out of my hide for a month. 

After that we walked a while and then took 
to the road. A farmer came along and gave us 
a ride and we told him our story. He was a 
good fellow and when we hit a Httle town he 
took us around to a little packing-box hotel 
and introduced us to the proprietor, who was 
a friend of his. 

The hotel man gave us a feed and let us sleep 
in the stable that night. Next morning he 
brought aroimd the local station-agent and he 
heard our tale of woe, too. I fancy they must 
have wanted to get us out of town, because the 
agent took us down that night and walked out 
to a water-tank about a mile down the line and 
helped to get us aboard an empty box-car. We 
made Richmond all right but we were fright- 
fully empty. Bean pawned his watch and we 
ate. Then we hunted jobs. 

It would be two weeks before the Blaney 
Company showed up and in the meantime we 

15 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

had to eat. It is a habit that grows on one, I 
notice, and both Bean and myself looked for- 
ward to a fortnight of emptiness with scant 
pleasure. It was one thing to hunt for a job in 
Richmond and another to find one. 

There seemed to be no market for a pair of 
actors on the bum. So when the watch money 
was gone we joined the Salvation Army. For 
the next ten nights we pounded the big bass 
dnmi and simg h3rmns and incidentally acquired 
a large respect for the Army. They pulled us 
through. We ate and we slept. And when the 
Blaney Company showed up we deserted from 
the Army! 

I was with Blaney for two seasons after that, 
playing with Fiske O'Hara and afterwards with 
Lottie WiUiams in " The Tomboy Girl." About 
this time the moving pictures were crowding 
things pretty hard and so many companies were 
going to the wall and so many houses dark that 
I jumped into vaudeville. 

I opened an office as a producer in New 

i6 




Identification Discs Worn by the Author during His Service 
These discs are worn around the neck. The one shown on the left is 
green; the other is red. The green disc is removed in case of death and sent 
to the War Office 



ON THE STAGE 

York and succeeded for a while but eventually 
went broke. After that I went back on the 
stage again and stayed there until I decided 
to go over to France. 

At the time the Lusitania was sunk I was 
playing in stock in New Bedford. I was 
talking with the manager when I heard the 
news and said to him, 

"Well, here's my chance to be a soldier 
agam. We can't get out of declaring war on 
Germany." 

He laughed at me and said I was crazy and 
that we never would get into the war. After 
a few days I began to think he was right. I 
read the papers eagerly — read of the German 
cruelties and the atrocities in Belgium and of 
the endless call for men in England. Eventu- 
ally I saw there was no chance of the United 
States getting in. So I made a quick decision 
for myself, quit the stage then and there and 
declared war on Germany. I was going over 
and I was going quick. The memories of the 

17 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

military life at Norwich came back and I 
wanted to get into uniform as soon as possible. 
So I jumped the train for Boston and the next 
day was himting transportation to England. 



i8 



CHAPTER IV 
Training 

When I started himting a way to get across 
I was, of course, broke as per usual. So I de- 
cided to work the horse boats as so many others 
had done. I shipped without any trouble on 
the Cambrian and sailed June 24, 19 15, arriv- 
ing in London on July 7 after a mildly exciting 
voyage. 

I had shipped for the round trip and was 
given five dollars cash and board and room at 
the Sailors' Home on Lemon Street. I batted 
around a bit and spent the five dollars and then 
hit the trail for the nearest recruiting office. I 
had had enough of horses, and anyhow I had 
come over to enlist so I wanted to get in as soon 
as possible. 

London at the time was full of recruiting 
stations and there were red arrows all over 

19 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the shop pointing the way to the chance to 
give up life and Hberty for King and Country 
or for the fun of it as the case might be. I fol- 
lowed the arrows to Shoreditch Town Hall and 
went through the formalities and the examina- 
tions. They refused me flatly on account of 
poor eyesight. My right eye was all right but 
the left was no good at all. I had always sup- 
posed that both of them were good. 

I tackled another office in Whitechapel and 
went thorugh the same thing. Next day I 
went to an office at 32 St. PauFs Churchyard 
and told my troubles to the sergeant there. I 
said I was going to get into the army if I had 
to use a jimmy and that it was going to take 
a lot of refusing to keep me out. We went in 
to the officer and he heard the story without 
any reservations. He was a good chap, that 
officer. He put me through the examinations 
up to the eye test and said I was right enough 
except that I was light, weighing just under a 
himdred poimds. 

20 



TRAINING 

When it came to the eyes he said, 

"Now, my lad, on this test of the left eye 
you cover up your right eye with your hand in- 
stead of a card." 

I did that little thing and was able to see 
fine between my fingers. I enlisted under my 
stage name, Arthur Mack. Three days later 
I was at Mill Hill Barracks, a member of the 
2 2d Middlesex Regiment, an outfit of bantams. 
We were a funny-looking crowd. Early in the 
war the experiment of bantam regiments was 
well tried out. There wasn't a man in our 
regiment that was over five feet four and from 
that down. On the whole, though, the bantams 
never were a success: it turned out that a 
small man is a good deal more likely than a 
big one to have other disqualifying troubles. 
Eventually all the bantam units were distrib- 
uted to other regiments. 

I had been in uniform only three days when 
a drill sergeant spotted me as one who had had 
previous military training. He asked me and 

21 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

I told him all about my three years at Nor- 
wich. About six weeks later the sergeant- 
major sent for me and said: 

"Private Mack, I understand that you have 
had military training before and that you 
know the duties of a corporal. Do you realize 
the responsibihties? " 

"Yes, sir," I said, "I do." 

"Very well," he said, "you are to go up for 
your stripes." 

Now I knew too much about the military 
game to want to be a non-com and I said so. 
I told the sergeant-major that I did n't think 
I should like to assume the responsibility of 
even a low non-com much less seek pro- 
motion. I wished, I told him, to remain a 
private. 

The sergeant got pretty savage over that 
and made me feel that I had insulted him, the 
British Army and the King. But I knew what 
I wanted and what I didn't want and was 
content to remain just a private. I would n't 

22 



TRAINING 

have gone higher and have often been glad 
that I did n't. 

Two weeks later I was recommended to 
Brigade Officers' Staff and reported there as 
orderly. I hated to leave the bunch of pals I 
had come to like so weU but the job was the 
cushiest in the army. It let a man out of aU 
training and gave him better grub and a bed to 
sleep in. 

My regiment was shifted about constantly 
during the ^ve months I was at headquarters, 
and I saw Aldershot, Borden, Pirbright and 
several other places. 

Then I heard that my regiment was going 
to France. I asked for transfer back to active 
service. I got it. But I found that I had 
missed a lot of training. A short time after 
my return the men were aU examined by the 
Medical Board for Overseas and I failed to 
pass. 

That was discouraging as I had by this time 
fully made up my mind that I was going to 

23 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

see fighting by hook or by crook. I was sent 
to Harwich in a reserve batt. I had been there 
just one week when the commanding ofiicer 
asked for men who had passed their medical 
examinations and their course of firing. He 
wanted them as volunteers for the London 23d. 
I promptly hopped out of the ranks and 
volxmteered, though I wasn't up on either of 
the requirements. 

Somebody must have had an eye shut be- 
cause I got away with it. Next day I was in 
Winchester and a week later I sailed for France. 

Before sailing I had a new equipment which 
weighed complete ninety poxmds. I weighed 
myself stripped the day I received it and I 
tipped the beam at just ninety-nine poimds. 
Some load! 

Landed in France at Le Havre, I had nine 
days more of strenuous drill in specialized lines 
and then was ready for the front. Incidentally 
I saw the sights in Le Havre, the Red Light dis- 
trict and the white lights too. That is part of 

24 



TRAINING 

a soldier's education over there, you know. If 
he does n't learn to keep his head and behave 
himself on leave he's a poor soldier. 

The little more than a week of drill in Le 
Havre ended too soon. Within a few days after 
that we were within sound of the rumble of the 
big guns. 



25 



CHAPTER V 

First Night in the Trenches 

We cannot fight, 
We cannot die, 
Wot bloody good are we? 
And when we get to Berlin, 
The Kaiser he will say, 
Mein Gott, mein Gott, 
Wot a very fine lot 
To send to Germanee. 

I WAS lying on the floor of a bell tent at the 
base in Le Havre on a hot day in August. The 
hoarse voice of the singer floated in on the still 
air very dismally. He had the tune wrong and 
he did n't have the words exactly right, and he 
bore down on the "Wot bloody good are we/' 
as if he relished it. 

I got up and peeped through the tent flap. 
The singer was sitting on an upturned bucket 
peeling potatoes. His face was about eighteen 

26 



FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 

inches long and he slewed his mouth around, 

rolled his eyes and shifted off into another 

song. 

Take me over the sea 
Where the Allemand can't get me, 
Oh, my I I don't wanner die. 
I wanner go 'ome. 

That finished me. I had heard both songs 
before sung better, but they never got imder my 
vest like that, and I knew there wasn^t any 
answer to the "Wot bloody good are we?", at 
least as far as I was concerned, and I knew 
right well that I wanted to go 'ome. 

I ducked out and hoofed it for the C. 0., 
and shoved in an appHcation for discharge from 
the British Army on the grounds that I was an 
American citizen. 

I was just down from seven weeks in the 
hospital after being woimded in three places on 
the same day by shell fragments. I was still 
shaky and had a silver plate in the top of my 
head and could feel my brains wobble around, 
but I had been examined by the Medical Board 

27 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the day before and told that I was fit and that 
I was to be sent back to the batt in less than a 
week. 

This was in 19 16. In those days you could n^t 
get a discharge from the British Army for any- 
thing less than a leg off; and if you happened 
to be a good shoemaker or accountant or some- 
thing you did n't need a leg for, I don't beheve 
they'd let you go at that. It was possible for 
an American citizen to beg off. I had had a 
little more than three months in the trenches 
and was fed up. I had had enough. I wanted, 
like the fellow in the song, to go home. 

I suppose that every rookie goes through the 
same experience. He strikes a period in his 
service when he would give anything to get 
away. He has had enough fighting to be 
thoroughly scared and not enough to have be- 
come a seasoned veteran. It is this period of 
depression that produces the many songs like 
the ones quoted above. There was another, of 
which I can recaU only the last three lines. 

28 



FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 

They were a supplication to the war office and 

went: 

Send your father, send your brother, 
Send your sister, send your mother, 
But for Gawd's sake don't send me. 

These songs were all sung in a spirit of josh, 
but we meant 'em too. Say what you will, 
there is a time in the life of any soldier when he 
wishes he had n't come. 

I am mighty glad to read that the American 
troops are being broken in and given their bap- 
tisms gently, so to speak. Back in the old days 
of 19 1 5, and half way through 19 16, the British 
were so short of men that they had to take raw 
rookies and shove them in to get used to things 
as best they could. That spoiled a lot of sol- 
diers. It came near spoiling me. 

As a fine example of the way the thing should 
not be done if it can be avoided it may do no 
harm to teU something about those first three 
months in the service. 

Probably no chap ever forgets his first night 

29 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

ia the trenches. I '11 bet a dinner there is n't 
one man in a thousand that had one like mine. 
I had been about ten months in training in 
England before being sent over to France. 
That was about twice what most of them were 
getting at the time. I had been in imiform so 
long that I'd heard the war talked over from 
every angle, and had heard scores of men who 
had come back tell of their experiences and 
had got so I thought the big show was more or 
less of a cinch. 

When I finally did go over they had me right 
up at the front without delay, and the batt 
landed in a place called Fonquevillers, bet^ter 
known to the Cockney as Funky Village. We 
were dumped down out of a train of toy freight 
cars five miles behind the lines, late in the after- 
noon, and marched up to the front. We got 
into the communication trenches at dark and 
aroimd ten in the evening I was standing on 
the fire-step in the front line looking over the 
top. Coming up there had been a booming of 

30 



FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 

guns at a distance in both directions, north 
and south, but we hadn't seen a shell burst. 
A mate of mine named Higgins and I were 
shown a traverse about thirty feet long and 
told to stand on the fire-step until relieved, and 
there we were. 

The place was as still as the middle of 
somebody's melon patch along towards morn- 
ing. There wasn't a gun of any sort, big 
or little, going off for miles around. We 
stood a while on the step and "Hig" whispered 
to me: 

"What do we do next. Mack?" 

His whisper sounded like an umpire talking 
through a megaphone. 

"Shut up, you fool," I hissed. "They '11 
hear you." 

That was how little v/e knew about what to 
do and how to do it. We stood there without 
moving imtil my foot went to sleep and the 
sweat was rolling down my back. 

Then the rats began to come. We had kept 

31 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

so still that I fancy they thought this bay was 
theirs. Anyhow, as many as a dozen big ones 
came scuttling along the trench and along the 
step. We did n't bother them until two of the 
biggest got in a row over a bit of garbage or 
something and squealed enough to make your 
blood run cold. 

"Hig" stood up on the step, whispering, 
"Shoo, shoo," at the rats, but they didn't 
pay any attention and had it out. I was afraid 
the Heinies would hear and come over to stop 
the fight. But nothing happened. After the 
rat row we loosened a little. I got down a 
sandbag to stand on to look over and stared 
out into the dark. There were a lot of old 
stumps out there, and after a while one of 
them moved. Then it did n't move. Then it 
looked like a horse, and moved again. My 
throat got dry and the hair crawled on the 
back of my neck and I itched in seventeen 
separate places. 

"Hig" pussyfooted down next to me and 

32 



FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 

said, in a trembly voice, "See 'em move, 
my tie? Le 's give it to 'em." 

I held up my hand to him and he sneaked 
back, but before he went I heard him mutter: 

"Gripes, I wish they'd be some noise." 

I wished so too, but there wasn't. Not a 
shot of any kind was fired all night long. I 
nearly went mad half a dozen times, and when 
it began to get Hght I was a nervous wreck. 

Just as it was graying a little a couple of 
men came through lugging a dixie of stew and 
we fiUed up the tins. I was so glad to see some- 
body that I could talk to that I was nearly 
ready to hug the two of them. They growled 
and said some tea would be along shortly, and 
went. The tea never arrived. 

Before we had a chance to tackle the stew 
Fritz began to shell us. We'd been wishing for 
less silence, and, by heck, we got more noise. 
Out of a clear sky they gave it to us for twenty 
minutes, — whiz-bangs mostly, and they hit 
everywhere but in our traverse. One hit in 

33 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the next bay and we heard a man yelling in 
there. We dropped our rifles and crouched 
under the parapet with our teeth chattering, 
praying for the end. 

When it was all over I found that I'd got 
my foot into my stew. I did n't care par- 
ticularly, because I was so sick I couldn't 
have eaten it, an3rw^ay. After the strafing was 
well over we were reHeved. I did n't get over 
that nerve-shattering first night and morn- 
ing for days. It was a poor way to start a 
rookie in. 

The Funky Village sector was supposed to 
be a holiday part of the line. It was, in a way. 
Frequently there would be no shelling at all, 
day or night, for days, except the regular 
strafing at breakfast. We got that without 
fail. After a week or ten days we got used to 
it and were on the way to becoming veterans. 

In the matter of the hardships of trench life 
Funky Village was a fine prep school for any- 
thing they could offer us anywhere else. For a 

34 



FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 

so-called trench system it was a disgrace to an 
army that had been in the field learning for 
nearly two years. When the trenches had been 
dug they had been reasonably good, but they 
had been bashed in and there had never been 
any attempt at repairs. The nature of the 
ground made the traverses catch aU the water 
there was in that part of the world and hold 
it. We were up to our knees aU the time and 
up to the middle part of the time. It is a 
wonder we didn't grow flippers and tails. 
Hip-boots had not been issued at that time 
and we just wallowed. We used to cut sand- 
bags in two and wrap our legs, but all that did 
was to parboil the skin. 

The commimication trenches were so deep 
in water that two men were actually drowned 
in them. It was impossible to get up hot 
rations with any pretence of regularity. For 
the most part we lived on cold stuff with stew 
and tea when we got it, which was seldom. 
Water was scarce, except under foot. Drink- 

35 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

ing water was brought up in petrol tins and 
would be blue with oil. A good part of the 
time we drank the stuff out of the trenches, 
thick as pea soup with Httle zoos in it. Some 
humorist stuck up a sign, reading: 

DonH Drink the Water You Sleep In 

But most of us did it rather than try to 
worry down the gasolene mixture. It was a 
queer thing that the bad water did n't seem to 
make anyone sick. I fancy that we all got 
kind of amphibious after a bit, healthy like 
sea lions, and that we could have lived in an 
aquarium. 

You will understand that this was along 
towards the fag end of the extremely bad con- 
ditions on the British front. From the fall of 
19 1 6 on, things got better, but it did take the 
EngHsh a long time to learn. 

I think it may be fairly said that the su- 
periority of trench construction by the Ger- 
mans from the beginning was the great reason 

36 



FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 

why the Huns had it on the British in net 
miHtary results in the early days. 

From the time they dug in the Germans 
were thorough and careful in their trench 
building. They went down deep with their 
trenches and with their dugouts. They were 
safer all the time than we were. They were 
dry and comfortable in their sleeping quarters. 
Their communication trenches were good and 
they were able to feed their men well at all 
times. It stands to reason that a man who has 
slept well and eaten well is worth, setting aside 
the consideration of personal bravery, as much 
as two or three men who have slept in muck- 
holes and who have had cold rations. 

Whenever criticism was offered on the sub- 
ject of bad British trenches and the lack of 
dugouts the answer always was that they did n't 
expect to stay in their positions long enough 
to make elaborate workings worth while. 
That was not the answer at all. The fact was 
that the British did stop in bad trenches with- 

37 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

out going forward for a year, and for two 
years at some points. The reasons were two. 
First, the fact that England was not ready 
when the war started, and that her officers, 
drawn mostly from civiHan life, had to learn. 
The second reason was that the Englishman is 
naturally conservative and slow to grasp a 
new idea, and is satisfied to muddle through. 

I can look back on those trenches at Funky 
Village and see how even a Httle pick and 
shovel work in the quiet days when we had 
absolutely nothing to do would have given us 
dry dugouts, good drainage, safe traverses and 
communications, and would have increased our 
efficiency one hundred per cent if we had n't 
been lazy or stupid, whichever it was. 

Well, that 's all gone by. And I, for one, can 
rejoice that the American rookie has not to 
face the bad conditions of breaking in that I 
had to go against. What we had at Funky was 
heaven compared with what the Canadians 
endured at Ypres a year earlier, but it was so 

38 



FIRST NIGHT IN THE TRENCHES 

bad that no new troops going in now will ever 
have to stand up to anything like it. 

After that first night, and on up to the first 
of July, 19 1 6, we were in and out at Funky, 
having our "rest" at a place called St. Amand, 
an ex-village consisting of two pubs where they 
sold slushy beer and vin blanc, and about six 
whole houses. It was discouraging work. 

Sometimes we would have as many as fifteen 
or sixteen days in the trenches without reHef 
and then, maybe, two days in biUets. Over a 
week in the trenches at one stretch is ruinous 
to the nerves. At the end of one week a man's 
nerves get strung up so he gets to seeing things 
at night, whether he is a hardened vet or not. 
There was another place the Fritzies had it on 
us. According to all accoimts they made out 
from the beginning to give the men a regular 
system of six days in the front line, six days in 
support and six days in billets. They came 
back fresh. We did n't. 



39 



CHAPTER VI 

Over the Top on the First of July 

Well, we worried along this way until the 
first of July, and on that day they pulled off 
what was supposed to be the big spring at- 
tack. All the rookies who had come up with 
me were on the ragged edge of nervous pros- 
tration and the chaps who had been there when 
we came were nearly as bad. 

Our morale was bad. We had got some used 
to being shelled — just enough so we were able 
to figure out the mathematical chances of being 
hit by the next one — and that's a bad state 
to be in. Most of us had never been under 
rifle fire in the open or under machine guns, 
and we were so shaken that we dreaded it. 
And that's the shape we were in when we went 
over the top on the morning of the first of 

July. 

40 



OVER THE TOP 

We had a fair artillery preparation — enough 
to batter down their wire and that was all. We 
went over early in the morning. There was 
no barrage — and we simply climbed out and 
went forward on the double. There was no 
smoke screen in front of us and we were open 
to the sight of the strongly emplaced German 
machines. 

Besides that we had very few grenades. The 
Mills bombs had come in only a short time be- 
fore and had not yet reached us. We had 
some of the old-fashioned hairbrush and jam- 
tin grenades, but they were worse than noth- 
ing, as the men did n't trust them. Those old 
jam-tin bombs were sure suicide tools. They 
were made, as the name impHes, of old jam and 
marmalade cans. You'd light the fuse and 
then had a matter of four seconds to throw the 
thing. Once a fellow in my section was get- 
ting ready to throw one and a bluebottle fly 
kept settling down on the grenade to get some 
©f the jam scrapings. The chap kept shaking 

41 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the fly off and finally he got the fuse lighted 
and the fly settled again, and he waited to 
give the bomb another shake and it went off. 
He never threw another bomb. The fly got 
away. 

So that's the way we went into the July first 
attack, without barrage and without bombs. 
Nothing but rifles and the bayonets. It was 
eight hundred yards to the German trenches. 
We crossed it on the double with two rests of 
about a minute each to catch our breath. The 
whole attack as far as our sector was concerned 
was a washout. The division on our left had 
a mix-up on orders and didn't go over with 
the rest of us. The result was that we were 
enfiladed and raked fore and aft. 

I was so scared that I was petrified. I re- 
member that all the way across I was praying 
that I wouldn't have to use the bayonet or 
to face the bayonet. 

I have read a good deal of tommy-rot from 
time to time about the German being afraid of 

42 



OVER THE TOP 

the cold steel. The fact is that any Anglo- 
Saxon hates it. The Scotch and the Irish like 
the bayonet. The Englishman hates it as 
bad as any German. I dreaded it on my first 
charge, and in all the many months of service 
after that, and I hate the idea now. 

I had that dread topside in my mind all 
the way across. When we made the German 
trenches we found no Fritzies there. The Hun 
was playing it low down and foxy on us. He 
had raked us all the way across and had quietly 
abandoned his front line when we arrived. I 
dropped into a bay and waited there for as 
much as half an hour. The suspense was just 
what was needed to give me a let-down and 
knock out what faked-up courage I had left 
in me. 

I stood there alone, shaking all over, and 
very badly nauseated, imtil an officer came 
along and told me to join some of the men two 
traverses further down. I moved down and 
joined them. There was little shellfire and we 

43 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

were fairly safe from the typewriters. I was 
just getting a little courage back when a com- 
motion started around the comer in a com- 
munication trench, and a second later around 
the corner came crowding about twenty Heinies. 
They had come out of a dugout. 

They were on top of us in an instant. A big 
fellow made a thrust at me. I parried per- 
fectly. He dropped his rifle. I made a thrust 
at his chest. He caught the rifle with both 
hands and seemed to pull the bayonet into his 
throat. 

And then a strange thing happened. When 
the steel went into him my head cleared. The 
lump went out of my throat. My solar plexus 
stopped squirming. My knees were sohd. I 
let go a glad yell and kicked him off the pin. 
It broke at the butt, but I did n't care. I 
clubbed old Sarah Jane and went after the 
next Fritz, knowing I was just twice as good 
a man as he. 

We polished off that gang in less time than 

44 



OVER THE TOP 

it takes to tell it. About five minutes after- 
wards the Germans began to shell us. Lord, 
how they gave it to us! They had the range, 
naturally, having just left those trenches, and 
laid down the shells just where they would do 
the most good. 

Our orders had been to go it on our own 
and to return to our lines if the officers judged 
it was getting too hot. The officer in command 
of our platoon gave us the word and we went 
back. They enfiladed us on the return. But I 
never felt another pang of fear through that 
day. 

Out of the eight hundred of our batt that 
went over that morning just ninety-two re- 
sponded to rollcall in our trenches that even- 
ing. Another hundred straggled in through the 
night. The attack was one grand washout, 
but it did one thing for me. It gave me back 
part of the courage that had been squeezed out 
of me by my unfortunate early experience. 

Three weeks later, on the 21st of July, I was 

45 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

badly smashed up while standing in a trench. 
Shells bursting overhead — this was before I 
became known as "Shellproof — got me in 
the head and shoulder and the hand, — of 
which more later. 

They had me in the hospital for repairs, 
and at the beach for recuperation, and finally, 
as I have said, I brought up at Le Havre 
at the base, ready for shipment back to the 
front. 

During the days at the hospital and the 
beach I had time to think over the weeks in 
the trenches. And I came to resent keenly the 
things that had happened to me there. I was 
disgusted with the British Army. I was dis- 
gusted with war. I was fed up on mud and 
blood and cooties and bad food and the whole 
blooming show. I wanted to go home. 

So, as I have told, I went down to the C. 0. 
and applied for a discharge as an American 
citizen. The officer was agreeable and filled 
out the papers and told me I'd have to see 

46 



OVER THE TOP 

the Camp commander. I found him in his 
quarters. 

He was a middle-aged man with a ready but 
kind of frosty smile. He heard my case. 

" Surely/' said he, "you shall have your dis- 
charge. But don't you care for the British 
Army?'' 

With that little encouragement I opened up 
and told him all my troubles. I was fed up 
and said so. 

The officer twinkled his eyes. 

"Would n't you feel a Httle better with a bit 
more rest?" he asked. 

I shook my head kind of stubborn. 

"Have you killed a German yet?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir," I said, and I loosened up again 
and told him all about it. 

"Do you remember how you felt when you 
got him? " 

I thought a minute and then looked the 
officer in the eye. He smiled, and I smiled. 

He picked up my fiUed-out appHcation 

47 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

blank and held it out. I took it and tore 
it up. 

"Go back and get another German," he said; 
and he shook hands with me. 

Two days later I was on the way up to the 
Somme to rejoin the batt for thirteen months 
more of it. 



48 



CHAPTER VII 

Mascots 

The British Tommy has a lot of quahties 
that are unattractive and a lot more that 
endear him to the heart of anybody but a 
German. He is apt to be rough and uncouth. 
He grouses a good deal and is suspicious and 
unapproachable until he knows you. But he is 
always good-natured underneath and he sure 
is human. 

He has n't the cold intellectual efficiency of 
the 'orrible 'Un and he therefore insists upon 
keeping a variety of pets and mascots even if 
the Hve stock eats his rations and takes no 
active part in winning the war. 

Any soldier is more or less of a kid, usually 
more. No matter how old the Tommy is or 
what he was in peace times he sheds his re- 
sponsibility when he gets in uniform; he looks 

49 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

upon his officers as parents or schoolmasters, or 
both, and spends a good deal of his time trying 
to get around the entirely wholesome regula- 
tions laid down for him by those in command. 

One of these rules is the one that mascots 
shall not be carried. As a general thing the 
officers shut their eyes at the small animals. If 
Tommy had free hand a battalion would carry 
a menagerie with everything in it up to an 
elephant. Large animals eat a lot of grub and 
are in the way, which is probably the reason 
why they are banned. So the soldier has to 
worry along and bestow his affection on cats 
and small dogs with an occasional rabbit or 
guinea pig — anything that will .cuddle up and 
let itself be petted and loved. 

As a rule it is hard to keep dogs. The dog 
is supposed to be man's faithful friend. But 
it was our experience that the trench pups 
lived up to the reputation of the house cat. 
They went where they got the most grub. 
Another tradition gone blooey through the war! 

SO 



MASCOTS 

My crowd never did have but one dog that 
stuck. He was a tough Httle fox terrier named 
Kitchener and he loved rats. We used to get 
German shells loaded with lyddite, which gave 
off an awful stink, and smoke out rats for 
Kitchener. We would put some of the lyddite 
on pieces of paper and light them and sHp them 
into ratholes. Pretty soon the other holes 
down the trench would spout rats and Kitchener 
would have the time of his young life. He got 
hit by shrapnel at last and went west. 

When we were at the support timnel behind 
the Bluff Sector at Messines Ridge there was 
a grand old tomcat whose name was Bill — 
Old Bill to be exact. Bill was the mascot of 
the tunnel, not of any particular unit, and he 
was the first thing thought of or asked for when 
we came out of the trenches for a rest. 

Bill was a tough cat. He was built heavy 
forward, like a Hon, with wide jowls and 
battered ears where he had fought many a 
valiant fight with rats and such, and he had a 

SI 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

chronic scowl. He swaggered and did n't care 
a damn for anyone. So we liked him. Yet Old 
Bill was as human as any Tommy. He loved 
to have his beUy rubbed, and would rumble a 
hoarse purr like a whiskey tenor trying to sing 
bass. 

There were cook-houses outside the tunnel 
at the various entrances. Bill used to make 
the rounds two or three times a day for his 
rations and he kept fat. For a long time BiU 
liked to take a ramble out into the field when 
it was good and sunny. But one day a shell 
burst within fifty yards or so of Bill and he Ht 
out for home with a tail as big as a toffee apple. 
After that he never did go out. We always 
remembered Bill kindly because he clawed the 
leg of a war correspondent — a famous one at 
that — who came down to report the battle 
of Messines Ridge for a London daily. Bill 
was imdoubtedly an inteUigent cat and used 
good judgment in the case of the newspaper 
man who, as we found out when we saw the 

52 



MASCOTS 

papers^ reported as an eye-witness things that 
happened seventeen miles away from where he 
was when they happened. R. I. P. — Bill, not 
the war correspondent. 

Another cat my platoon had was a little 
she-one, very soft and cuddlesome, that would 
ride on the top of anybody's pack and make 
herself at home in any trench or dugout and 
never groused about the rations. Her name was 
Vic. Vic got very thick with a chap named 
Bott and used to follow him around. One night 
Bott went out on patrol and Vic went along 
and got lost. Along towards morning we heard 
her cr3ang out there in the dark and three men 
risked their lives — it was just before dawn 
and the Boche shelling was nearly due — going 
out after her. If that cat had gone west I think 
Bott would have been shot at sunrise. 

Another time we had a goat named Hinden- 
burg. He was allowed by the officers because 
he didn't require any rations. Hindenburg 
could butt like blazes. He was that kind of a 

53 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

goat. And while he was n't the sort of animal 
you'd care to take to bed with you, he was 
popular because he was rough and could take 
care of himself. When we were on the hike he 
would hop on the top of a limber and ride 
standing up, taking in the scenery, very inter- 
ested and independent. Hindenburg got on the 
crime-sheet when he ate the first leftenant's 
other shirt. After that the orders were to keep 
him tied up. He did n't like that and one day 
he chewed the rope apart and butted the 
C.S.M., a dignified old swab who was hoping 
for a commission that he couldn't afford. 
Hindenburg was turned over to the quarter- 
master and appeared later as mutton at the 
sergeants' mess. We all hoped he'd poison 
the cannibals, but he did n't and was said by 
those who had some of him to be good eating. 

There was a Blackpool Cockney in my 
platoon for a while that swore he had a tame 
cooty, but I think he was a liar. 

I think the strangest pet that I ever heard 

54 



MASCOTS 

of in the trendies was a tame starling. The 
English starling is about as common in northern 
France as he is across the Channel. Sometimes 
they get up pretty close to the lines, but on the 
whole they don't like gunfire and keep clear, 
the same as most of the other birds. Down 
around Funky, though, there was a starling 
that hung around the trenches regularly and 
got so tame he would come down and hop along 
the fire-step in the second line trench. Nobody 
ever bothered him and he lived well. 

Soldiers are kind to animals and birds. They 
are bound to be, as they take out all their hating 
on the Boche. And, anyway, a dog or a cat is 
human in comparison. 



55 



CHAPTER VIII 

Wounds 

When I was first in France, before going up 
to the front and before I had ever heard a shot 
fired in actual battle, I was sitting one day in a 
fit tie estaminet when in came a British soldier 
on crutches. He was quite evidently a veteran 
and I hailed him and asked him to have a drink. 
He was ready enough. A Tommy never refuses 
hospitality, particularly if it is Hquid. 

I wanted some inside information on trench 
conditions and the sort of thing I was likely to 
go up against in the next few weeks and I 
started in asking questions at once. 

My first one was that blamed fool query 
that I came later to hate so and that makes 
every soldier that hears it want to murder the 
questioner. 

"Have you been wounded?" 

56 



WOUNDS 

Any fool could see that this man had been 
wounded but I asked just the same. Tommy 
looked at me with contempt and I hastily 
ordered another drink for him. Just then 
another soldier entered. My chap didn't 
know the newcomer who had his arm in a sling 
but that did n't matter. He hailed him. 

"Wot 'o, mytie. 'Ave a go. The bloomin' 
rook 'ere's standin' treat." 

I ordered "veesky-soda" for the new man, 
who sized me up with almost as much scorn 
as the first one. To cover my confusion I asked 
another question. 

"How does it feel to be wounded?" 

This seemed to be in perfectly good form 
and I got my answer from him of the crutch. 

"Hit feels," says he, "like gettin' bashed wiv 
a bally cricket ball." 

"Yer're a liar," said he of the smashed 
arm, speaking without heat. "Feels like 
some bHghter was stickin' a red 'ot needle in 
yer." 

57 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

There followed an argument on the sensa- 
tions of various woimds. Each man had been 
hit only once and each was right as to the feel- 
ing that he individually registered. 

Later on I copped a few myself and would 
have been able to give a new recruit a whole lot 
of information on how it feels to get hit with 
either bullet or shrapnel or to get gassed or to 
be buried and jammed about with sandbags, 
which usually coimts for a wound; and I could 
have told him something of the sensations of 
shellshock, although I don't really qualify on 
that last, being shellproof apparently, and 
never was able in my whole seventeen months' 
experience in the trenches to work up anything 
more than faint symptoms of shock. 

I remember my first wound. Everybody is 
bound to if it doesn't knock him cold. My 
first one was more painful than any hurt that 
I received except, of course, being gassed. 

My first three wounds were received all on 
one day and they were not come by in battle. 

58 



WOUNDS 

I never, in fact, was hit by anything in action, 
— that is, in a charge or a raid. 

We were in a front trench one morning when 
Fritz commenced his regular before-breakfast 
strafing. I had become pretty well accustomed 
to this sort of thing at the time and was more or 
less indifferent to it. I was hunched up under 
the parapet, along with my mate Higgins. I 
had my tin kelly pushed back on my head, 
which was a careless thing to do — but you do 
get careless over there. A big boy burst in the 
next traverse and a lot of muck and stones 
came over and Hig sung out to me, 

"Pull yer 'at up on yer napper, yer fool." 
Well, I laughed at him but I took his advice; 
and just as I took hold of the rim of the helmet 
and pulled it forward a big chunk of shell 
caught me right on the fingers. Woow! It 
pinched my trigger finger against the rim of the 
tin hat and smashed it — smashed it plenty — 
and jammed the second finger almost as bad. 
Did you ever get your finger shut in a door or 

59 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

caught in one of the old-fashioned patent 
rockers? This was the same thing, only more so. 
Hig got a first-aid bandage on the hurt, and 
when the blood began to come back into it 
she fairly jumped and I howled. It was hurting 
so that I thought I would find some kind of a 
dugout and crawl in and nurse it there. 

I was going down the trench hunting for 
shelter when I got my second crack. Zizzz- 
Whang! Down comes a whiz-bang, which is 
a choice variety of sheU that sounds like that 
and that you don't hear until it goes off. This 
,one hit so near that it slammed me up against 
the parapet and I felt a smash on the shoulder 
about like what the fellow said about the 
cricket ball. It was just a shocking jolt, numb- 
ing but not painful at first. Then after a bit 
it began to hurt, too; but not anywhere as 
bad as the hand. That shoulder wound was 
serious. A big chunk of shrapnel had gone in 
and ripped a big hole. An officer came up and 
told me that I'd better get along back to an 

60 



WOUNDS 

aid station as the shoulder ought to be looked 
after right away. There weren't any com- 
munication trenches at that point and it was 
up to me to go over the top, — that is, to 
climb over the parados and go to the rear 
across lots. I didn't fancy it and said so. 
I could walk all right and did n't see any need 
of taking any such risk, at least until the 
shelling was over. However, the hand was 
hurting so that my judgment was kind of 
hazy and it was an order really from the officer 
to go back. Anyhow, I went. 

I remember I had gone about a hundred 
yards and was breaking all records for cross- 
country running when there was a blinding, 
stunning crash. For an instant I had a sink- 
ing sensation, without any pain and then I 
did n't know any more. 

This last one was a big piece of shell and it 
pretty near lifted the top of my head off. I 
never did wake up after that whack until I was 
miles back of the line in a hospital. Then the 

6i 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

old napper did n^t hurt much; but the shoulder 
was throbbing some and the hand was hurt- 
ing worse than ever. They operated on the 
head and put in a nice silver lid, and that 
didn't bother me any more, although, of 
course, it was the serious wound of the three. 
The shoulder got well after some weeks and 
the hand kept on being bad for months. For 
that matter I have never had the use of that 
trigger finger since. 

My second time woimded and my fourth hit 
was with a bullet, and it reminded me of the 
fellow who maintained so stoutly that a 
wound was like a hot needle. 

This took place one night while on a ration 
party. About six of us were going back to 
bring up the grub. We had loads, depend 
upon that. Tommy is made a pack-horse 
whenever he goes to the rear. There is always 
something to go back. We each had buckets 
in one hand and a case of Mills bombs on 
the other shoulder. There was one incom- 

62 



WOUNDS 

petent, clumsy beggar in the party who kept 
shifting his bucket and his case of bombs. 
Now when a Very Hght goes up, the thing to 
do is to stand absolutely still until the light 
has died down. If you stand still Fritz does n't 
see you. If you move, he fans you with a 
typewriter and fills you full of bullets. We 
kept teUing this chap to freeze when a light 
went up, but he kept taking occasion to shift 
his load when a Very was floating overhead, 
and the Boche spotted us. 

The first burst of bullets drilled me clean 
through the thigh. It didn't hit the bone; 
and it did feel exactly like a hot needle. I 
kept on walking for about three steps. Then 
I dropped the bucket and dragged a little. 
Then down went the Millses and I dragged 
some more. Then I went down myself. 

That cute little hole in the leg did n't pain 
me any to speak of, after the first "burn"; 
and it only kept me in the hospital two weeks. 

The human body sure will stand a lot of 

63 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

punishment at times. Of course where there 
are so many men being hit every day things 
happen that anyone would have said before 
the war could n't happen. 

We had in our batt a negro. Blacks were 
not common in the British Army — that is, 
outside of native units. I used to josh the 
Tommies and fill them up with fairy tales 
about this and that; and I instructed them 
on that old tradition about a negro's head 
being harder than a white man's. Only I 
stretched it and told them that a bullet would 
bounce off the black man's skull. 

Well, it happened that this coon got creased 
along the scalp two or three times without 
getting hurt enough to send to the rear and the 
men had got so they believed his napper would 
turn anything. After a while he got one 
straight through the top of the head. The 
bullet went in at the top of his forehead and 
came out of the back. It must have pierced 
his brain, if he had any. And he lived. That 

64 



WOUNDS 

is, he lived for three days; and I think if he 
hadn't got spilled out of an ambulance he 
would have pulled through to convalescence. 

Another queer thing in the way of war 
hurts is shell-shock. Some men seem to be 
shell proof — like myself. I have seen a man 
lifted and thrown over into the next traverse 
and half his clothes taken ojff by a shell which 
must have burst right beside him; and there 
was nothing the matter with the fellow. On 
the other hand some are so sensitive to the 
jar of shells that they get shell-shock if one 
bursts within a hundred yards. 

Shell-shock is, of course, merely a form of 
paralysis. In the early days of the war it 
used to be the custom to execute any man 
who deserted under fire or, rather, who showed 
cowardice and ran, disobeying orders. For 
that matter, it is the custom now, only they 
are more careful to prove the case, because 
it was found that a good many men with 
slight shell-shock and apparently all right, 

65 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

really had no control over themselves. Their 
legs would work all right but the brain did n't, 
and they were as apt to start running to the 
rear as anything else. They were n't cowards. 
It was simply that the telegraph system of 
the nerves had been shocked out of commis- 
sion and they could n't make their feet behave. 

After all, when you figure it all out, mere 
wounds are the smallest part of war. I would 
rather be in the front trench taking my chance 
with the whiz-bangs any time than ten miles 
to the rear, making roads or lugging ammo. 

The percentage of chances of being hit is 
small. If you are hit it is likely to be a cushy 
one that you can swing BKghty on. Or it 
may be a quick one that will snuff you out 
like a candle and send you west without your 
knowing it. Either one is good. The per- 
centage of wounds that are painful and crip- 
pling is very, very small. 

Anyhow, it is the chance you have to take. 
It's a great life and you can't weaken. 

66 



CHAPTER IX 
My Nickname and How I Got It 

Last Christmas Eve, just after I got home 
to America, I was sitting with a bunch of fellows 
and one of them said, 

"Come on, Mack. Tell us a nice cheerful 
Christmas Eve story about the trenches." 

It was a large order and it couldn't be 
done; for Christmas eve in the trenches is 
rarely a pleasant occasion. Fritz sends over 
too many Christmas presents. To the rear 
there may be good food and merriment and 
rejoicing of a sort, but not up there in the 
front line. 

I have spent one Christmas on the firing 
line and it was not pleasant. There is very 
little Christian spirit in the trenches at any 
time, and rather less on Christmas Eve than 
at any other season. 

67 



MY NICKNAME 

Still and all, the British Tommy is cheerful 
always. He finds the heart to make light of 
his troubles when they are the heaviest. So 
I am going to set down the thing that hap- 
pened to me Christmas Eve, 19 16; and if it 
reads like the story of a railroad wreck it has 
at least the merit of being true and absolutely 
without camouflage. And I am glad that I 
was able on that night to accept the happening 
in the spirit of irrepressible good nature that 
is the outstanding characteristic of the London 
Cockney. 

Without wanting to get over-personal I 
think I may say that I am a true Cockney. 
When I left the United States I was an Ameri- 
can, bom and bred here. When I enlisted in 
London they told me that I was an Irishman. 
After two years with the 23d BattaHon of 
the London Regiment I found I was a Cockney 
of Cockneys; and I suppose I shall remain 
so imtil American life remodels me again. 

Well, to resume. When I began, all hands 

68 



MY NICKNAME 

insisted that there must have been something 
happen to me on Christmas Day or on the 
night before and that I ought to tell it. Which 
I did. And I am setting down here the yarn 
that I told then of how I came by my nick- 
name in the batt where I was known to officers 
and men as "Old Shellproof." 

December, 19 16, our batt was lying up at 
Dominion Camp, near Popperinghe, about eight 
miles behind the lines and about six miles 
from Ypres. We had been on this sector ever 
since October, when we had been moved up 
after the Big Push (that's the battle of the 
Somme, you know). During those months we 
had been in and out from the trenches at Hill 
60, taking over for a week and then coming out 
to the Dominion Camp billets for a week of 
rest. 

Along about the nineteenth or the twentieth 
of December rumors began going around 
that we were to go in for Christmas. We had 
been in billets for only ^ve days and there 

69 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

was the usual grousing. There is no place like 
the army for rumors. The average battalion 
has got the average sewing circle beat seven 
ways for gossip. You can hear anything that 
you want to listen to; so when the bad news 
came we all hoped for the best and trusted to 
luck that there might be nothing in it. This 
time it happened to be right and rumor pedlers 
had the real story. On the morning of the 
twenty-first we got orders to take over Hill 
60 for ten days, to be followed by ten more 
days in support. 

The weather was just like spring in New 
England, warm and sticky, especially sticky, 
with mud up to the knees in most places and 
up to the ankles everywhere. We spent the 
whole day cleaning equipment and grousing. 
We had one old fellow in my platoon named 
Tuffnell who had been in the service from the 
beginning, and who had never had a leave. 
I call Tuffnell old. He was forty; and that 
is well along for a soldier. He had just had 

70 



MY NICKNAME 

bad news from home, and thought sure that 
he would get a furlough for Christmas. But 
he didn't and was well discouraged. It's the 
way of things in the army. There is a lot 
that seems like injustice, but it is all for the 
great cause, and a chap has to take it with a 
grin. Old Tuff foimd it hard, and he could n't 
help showing it. 

The rest of us kept more cheerful than we 
had any right to be, and there was a lot of 
joking and horse play when we feU in at six 
o'clock for the eight-mile hike. It is a queer 
thing about Tommy that he smothers his 
grouch and starts joshing the minute he gets 
in action, no matter how cross he had seemed 
a Kttle while before. There was a lot of talk 
among us about the turkey dinner we would 
have in the trenches, and some cheerful betting 
that some of us would never eat another 
Christmas dinner in the line or out. 

According to custom we got away by com- 
panies at about fifteen-minute intervals. We 

71 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

marched this way until we got to the outskirts 
of what had been the city of Ypres, where we 
broke up into platoons and went along that 
way until we hit the duck walls, about two 
miles from the front line, where we went single 
file. 

I have been through Ypres many times and 
never got entirely hardened to the frightful- 
ness of war as shown by the desolation there. 
Here was a town of at least 30,000 or 40,000 
people one great hopeless ruin. Judging from 
the remains of the old Cloth Hall and the 
Cathedral and of the many churches it must 
have been very beautiful; and here in two 
short years the labor and art work of centuries 
was reduced to broken junk. 

After passing Ypres and getting on the 
duck boards on this particular night we were 
supposed to go quietly, as Fritz was busy and 
the shells whistled overhead all the time, and 
the typewriters were sending over plenty of 
bullets; we were still in a mood for kidding, 

72 



MY NICKNAME 

however, in spite of the danger, and every 
few minutes somebody would fall off the boards 
with a clatter of equipment and all hands 
would holler, "Hurroo! There goes Clubfoot 
Dean." 

Clubfoot was one of those fellows that fall 
over their own shadows in the daytime and 
can't keep their footing at all at night. He 
was a nuisance. Nobody wanted to march 
behind him, because every time he went down 
the fellow behind would pile up too. It was 
worse to march in front, because he always 
made out to thump the man ahead when he 
took his header. 

We used to threaten to shoot Clubfoot and 
wished him all kinds of bad luck; but he was 
dangerproof and never seemed to get hurt by 
bullets or an)^hing else. 

Well, in spite of old Clubfoot, we got up to 
the front trench and reheved the other batt. 
We tried to pump them as usual, as we wanted 
to know who were in front of us — the Prussians, 

73 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the Bavarians or the Saxons. As usual we 
got mighty Httle information beyond saying 
that it had been very quiet and to look out 
for the snipers. It was always the way. When 
you are being relieved you are in a hurry to 
go. If the Germans get on to the fact that a 
change is taking place, they will make it a 
point to shell blazes out of the approaches and 
the fellows going out get it good. So they 
want to go quick and they have n't any time 
to swap lies with the rehef . 

Stm and all, the chaps taking over are 
entitled to some information as to the particu- 
lar enemy they are going to fight. It makes a 
great difference. The Prussians are nasty 
fighters. I mean by that that they keep at 
it night and day and don't seem to have any 
sense of trying to make things easy for both 
sides. 

There's no reason why a feUow shouldn't 
be reasonable even if he is at war. I have 
heard it said that the Prussians are the best 

74 



MY NICKNAME 

fighters in the German army. I, personally, 
don't think so. When they come to close 
quarters they will fight until there is no hope, 
then they quit. 

Now the Bavarian is sort of a decent, gentle- 
manly bird, with some sense; but he'll go a 
step further than the Prussian when he is at 
close quarters, and will keep on scrapping when 
there is no hope — like a Frenchman or an 
Englishman or a Jock or a Canadian. He's 
just that much better than the advertised 
Prussian. 

Your Saxon, now, he's another breed of cats. 
He is a big, good-natured, blond beggar, and 
he is perfectly willing to lay off the sniping 
and the nasty work any time and be friendly. 
We were in one sector several times where 
the trenches were only thirty yards apart. 

When the Saxons came in they would let 
us know it, and all hands would start doing 
the brother act. They knew they could trust 
us and we knew we could trust them. A lot 

75 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

of them could speak English, and they would 
hop up on the parapets unarmed and shout 
across to know if we had any fags. Then both 
sides would start joshing. 

There would always be some of the Saxons 
who knew more about London than the men 
did who came from there, and they would 
swap yams about the places they both knew. 
Once I remember all of us got so interested 
over an argument as to how long the war would 
last and which side was going to win that we 
almost came to blows. 

One of the officers put a stop to it by going 
out between the lines — this, in broad day- 
light, mind you — and telling the Saxons that 
if they did n't get down he would order them 
fired on. On the whole, they were good, 
friendly fellows, and we liked them. 

I remember about the time that Rimiania 
entered the war; they had it before we did 
and told us all about it. When Bucharest fell 
they shouted the news across to us and we 

76 



MY NICKNAME 

called them bloody liars. There was a little 
bad feehng for a day or two and we did n't let 
them put their heads up. So they began to 
stick up signs telling us what boobs we were. 
We all had a shot at the signs. 

One night some of us sneaked over with a 
piece of old wire cable we had found and 
hitched it on to the Saxon barbed wire. Then 
about fifty of us got hold and gave a heave 
all together. We pulled up a section of the 
wire and it made an awful noise, and the 
Saxons cut loose with everything they had in 
the way of machine gun and rifle fire. I fancy 
they must have thought there was half a 
battaHon or more out their fussing with their 
wire. Next morning they saw what had made 
the disturbance and we joked them some 
more. They took it in good part. 

One time someone over in the Saxon trench 
got an old comet and started playing toot — 
a toot — toot, toot. After a while he just 
played the first part and the Saxons finished 

77 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

off the last two toots vocally. Then we joined 
in and tooted, too. We kept it up all one day 
like a lot of kids, until the officers came around 
and put a stop to it. 

Well, this time I'm telling about there were 
no good-natured Saxons against us — there 
were Prussians. The fellows we were taking 
over from told us to be careful of the snipers. 
We did n't need to be told that, as we had been 
on this sector before and knew just how bad 
the snipers would be if they were Prussians. 

I have to hand it to the Prussian snipers 
for bravery. They were as bold as brass, and 
as a common thing would get out between 
the lines at night and stop there in the daytime 
concealed behind dead bodies or in shell-holes 
or wherever there was cover and then put 
at us. As a rule I think that these snipers 
were officers. 

On several occasions they even got through 
our lines and hid to our rear and sniped at 
us. Think what nerve a man must have had 

78 



MY NICKNAME 

to do a stunt like that! He was nearly sure 
to get caught and not a chance for life if he 
was taken. 

Another nervy thing they pulled quite often 
was this: A German officer would dress in 
an English officer's uniform and deliberately 
come over and drop into our trenches and 
stroll along asking questions of the men. 
Usually he would wear the R. E. uniform, and 
would be some man who had been educated 
in England, and who was more English than 
the English themselves in manner and speech. 

The very boldness of it made the scheme 
successful. They got away with it as a rule, 
too. I have known of at least six cases of the 
sort in my sector, although I never actually 
saw but one. I remember one chap who was 
caught. He was taken before a lieutenant 
named Barrett. He greeted Barrett cordially 
with "Ah, Lieutenant Barrett, I believe. I 
had a shot at you a night or two ago and came 
jolly near doing' you in.'' 

79 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

"How do you know my name?" asked 
Barrett. 

The German laughed. 

"Really, old chap, you mustn't ask," he 
said. "That's my business, you know." 

Then he went on to tell about killing two 
officers some time before, giving their names 
and the time when they were killed. It all 
checked up. This officer was taken to the rear 
and probably shot, although I don't know 
about that. His courage and coolness cer- 
tainly merited something better. The bravery 
and willingness for sacrifice is not all on one 
side in this war. 

When we got into our front trench and 
tried to get settled down for the ten days of 
discomfort we found things bad. The trench 
was knee-deep in mud and water, and the 
water was cold. The dugouts were better 
than most in that part of the line.. It was a 
farce to call them dugouts, at that. They 
were only head and shoulder shelters. I am 

80 



MY NICKNAME 

fortunate in being short, for I could almost 
always find an extra-size shelter that I could 
get into, legs and all, and be fairly comfortable. 

Things were quiet for the next three days, 
with only a shell or two coming at intervals. 
We spent the time writing letters to the folks 
at home, telling them what a fine Christmas 
we were having and all about the big feed 
that was planned. As a matter of fact we 
were in for bully beef and bread and tea, but 
there was no harm in letting the people who 
were worrying about us think that we were 
due for turkey and plum pudding. 

My platoon was on duty in the front line 
from 7 A. M. to 8 p. m. No union hours over 
there, you see. The rest of the time we spent 
in the shelters. 

It was pretty quiet, as I have said, but we 
felt a little bit leary of Fritz. We expected 
him to send over his Christmas presents before 
the hoHday was past. It is a habit of the beastly 
Boche to select special occasions for his con- 

8i 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

tributions of explosive hardware. I never 
knew it to fail but once. 

On the Kaiser's birthday in 19 17 we had it 
all doped out that the Heinies would celebrate 
by strafing us with all they had. We got 
ready by building special parapets and sand- 
bagging everything that could be protected 
in that way. The Prussians were against us 
and^we had it figured that they could n't resist 
the temptation. They fooled us, and for the 
whole day and one before and one after they 
did n't send over a shell. 

On this Christmas Eve Fritz didn't dis- 
appoint us at aU. He was right there, living 
up to his reputation. For about four o'clock 
in the afternoon he started his show. There 
were five of us sitting on the fire-step in^ the 
bay talking when Captain Trembard came 
along on inspection of rounds. Mr. Trembard 
had only been out a few weeks and was due 
to become a very popular officer. He was a 
kind, cordial chap who seemed to take a 

82 



MY NICKNAME 

personal interest in the men, and was nowhere 
near as far away as the average captain. 

He came along and passed a few remarks, 
asking if we were trying to make ourselves 
comfortable, and then he wished us a Merry 
Christmas and moved down the traverse. He 
had hardly turned the corner of the bay when 
the first shell burst directly over the trench. 
It did Captain Trembard in. I ran down and 
found that he had gone west, hit fair in the 
stomach with a big fragment. 

I ran back and got up on the fire-step and 
hugged the parapet along with the others. 
Other shells came over and they had the range 
right. We humped ourselves up with our 
heads dov/n and our arms over our abdomens, 
trying to make ourselves small. You will 
understand that when a bombardment is on 
the men simply have to stand by and take it. 
There is not a thing to do but hope and wish 
them away. 

After giving us a ten minutes' strafing they 

83 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

let up a bit. We, too, loosened up and moved 
about some. A mate of mine named Livins 
and I were sitting on the fire-step. Howard 
was standing on the step and Tuffnell and 
Court were standing in the trench when the 
shell came over that fixed our clocks. It must 
have been a big boy, because there was a 
terrible crash and the whole parapet for the 
space of at least twenty feet lifted and came in 
on us. I found myself buried up to the neck, 
but I had raised my hands and they were sticking 
up in front of my face, although my arms were 
imder. I was packed in as neat as you please. 

Now getting buried by a shell-burst is not 
an unusual thing. It happens to thousands 
of soldiers. Nearly everybody that comes 
out of the big show alive has been buried 
wholly or partly. I was not uncomfortably 
crushed and naturally began to claw about 
and try to get my arms free. I'd have got 
completely out only I was saved the trouble. 

I may have been digging for two or three 

84 



MY NICKNAME 

minutes when I heard another shell coming. 
You can hear them go overhead with a long 
thin "sque-e-e-e-e-e." You instinctively duck 
your head, though you know it's not going to 
do any good. I ducked this time, sticking 
my nose into the mud. 

And then she smashed. I don't know 
whether it hit in front or behind; how near 
it was, or how big. All I knew was that there 
was another crash, which somehow seemed to 
come from below, and I oozed up, up, up out 
of the ground. "Oozed" is the only way I 
can express it. I could feel myself trickling 
up through the mud and then suddenly I 
fetched loose and flew. I must have gone up 
ten feet and I came down all spraddled out 
but on my feet. I promptly sat down. 

I was a little dazed but not much and began 
to laugh. Must have been a little hysterical, 
I suppose. I sat for not more than a few 
seconds and then deliberately got up. I did n't 
have a scratch. 

83 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

I didn't have a sign or a symptom of a 
shell-shock. I said to myself, "Mack, old top, 
you ought to get Blighty on this." And I tried 
to imagine that I was dumb or paralyzed or 
something. No use! I was as good as new. 

It was a case of in again, out again. I had 
been buried imder by a shell, which should by 
all rules of the game have done me in, and 
had been boosted out again by another that 
should have pulverized me. 

And no harm done. I took a look around 
and saw the trench all bashed in and legs and 
arms sticking out here and there, and then I 
shook the reefs out of my legs and fairly flew 
to the aid post in the rear. I got a couple of 
stretcher bearers and some shovels and went 
back. The shells by this time were going-over 
to the second line and we worked like beavers. 

Livins, who had been close beside me, was 
alive but blinded and badly shell-shocked. 
Poor old Tuffnell, who should have been on 
his way to Blighty by rights, had gone west 

86 



MY NICKNAME 

without a scratch or a mark on him, killed 
by the concussion. Court and Howard were 
both gone, too. I was the only man left in 
my section. 

Out of the forty-two men in my platoon 
there were only two left untouched besides 
myself. My experience attracted a lot of 
attention and various medical officers said 
that the impossible had happened. I was 
christened right then and there "Old Shell- 
proof," and I suppose I have lived up to the 
name; what with the silver skylight in the 
top of my head, the numerous holes in various 
parts of my body and considerable excess 
weight in the way of shrapnel fragments, to 
say nothing of having been filled up — as I 
shall tell you later — with the latest and 
most fashionable thing in the way of German 
kultur, mustard gas — and I am alive. 

I am no bloomin' Hercules, but with any 
kind of luck I hope to get into good enough 
shape with a little rest to go back over there 

87 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

and help finish up the job that I have helped 
start. 

So there you have the cheerful tale of a 
Christmas Eve. I had my head between the 
jaws of death and pulled it out just in time. 
Our batt was so badly cut up that they pulled 
us out, what was left of us, and sent the 24th 
in to relieve us, much to their disgust, as they 
had planned their Christmas dinner in the 
safety of the support trenches. 

That was where I had mine. It consisted of 
bully beef and suet pudding, and it tasted 
jolly good. There was plenty of it, as there 
were only three of us left to eat what had been 
provided for forty-two. 



88 



CHAPTER X 

Rehearsal 

In September, 19 17, when I was in a hos- 
pital in England recovering from an overdose 
of German mustard gas which I had inhaled 
before Passchendaele, someone was good enough 
to send me a copy of the Boston Post, That 
paper was sure fine reading, although it was 
nearly three months old. It was dated June 
8 and spread across the front page in big 
letters was the announcement of the begin- 
ning of the battle of Messines Ridge and the 
blowing up of Hill 60 with a million pounds of 
explosive. 

Perhaps I read the account of the Hill 60 
episode with more interest because I had been 
concerned in the preparations for the battle of 
which it was the opening gun. 

There had never been, I suppose, up to that 

89 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

time, and, of course, there has not been since, 
such elaborate preparation for a battle. For 
more than two years, or ever since the spring 
of 19 1 5, the Germans and the British had been 
facing each other along the Hill 60 sector and 
neither side had gained a yard. 

My division had been holding the Hill 60 
and the Bluff Sector to the right of the hill 
since October, 19 16. We had been in and out 
during all that time, taking over for ten days, 
or, sometimes, a week, and then for a like time 
in supports and after that in billets to the rear. 
We had got to know the place pretty well. Too 
well ! I fancy that the General Staff had come 
to hate the sight and name of Hill 60. Any- 
how, when the big attack, known as the battle 
of Messines Ridge, was planned, the most im- 
portant point in the line to be taken was Hill 60. 

The situation at the hill was imique. The 
German and British trenches paralleled each 
other, with British front line cutting into the 
west side of the hill. 

90 



REHEARSAL 

The surrounding terrain close-up was fairly 
level and the hill stuck up like a giant wart 
perhaps a hundred feet high, nearly round, and 
perhaps ^ve hundred yards across. The hill 
was, then, in No Man's Land, with the Hun 
trenches on the other side. But strangely 
enough the hill was occupied by the Germans, 
— that is to say, they did not occupy it on the 
surface of the ground; but they had run tunnels 
into the side of the hill and had fairly honey- 
combed the whole place with galleries and 
shafts. Thousands of their soldiers lived in 
these tunnels. On the top of the hill there had 
been a forest, but all the trees had been stripped 
of branches and were now merely splintered 
posts and stumps. The German snipers used 
to crawl up on the side of the hill and hide in 
the long grass and behind the wreckage that 
had been the wood and pick us off. This was 
one of the things that made the sector especially 
dangerous. 

Just to the right of the hill the lines bent to- 

9J 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

gether, and at one point were no more than 
thirty yards apart. Something more than a 
mile to the right the Yser Canal crossed both 
lines and No Man's Land at right angles. 
Along the bank of the canal ran a low ridge, 
also at right angles to the trenches. This ridge 
had been tunnelled lengthwise by our forces 
and was used as a support trench and for sleep- 
ing quarters. It accommodated three thou- 
sand men. 

Now, here was the situation. As much as a 
year previous to the battle of Messines Ridge 
our sappers had begun to run tunnels under 
Hill 60. The preparation for blowing it up 
had begun as far back as that. But on the 
other hand the Germans had sunk deep shafts 
and had rim imder the lines to the long timnel 
which we were using as a support, and the time 
was approaching in June when they would be 
ready to touch us off and send us up in the air. 
These mining operations were the most ex- 
tensive in the history of warfare. 

92 



REHEARSAL 

The rehearsals of the men began in March 
and they were as elaborate as the mining. 

About thirty miles to the rear there had been 
prepared a great field which was an exact rep- 
lica of the German front. Also a large num- 
ber of photographs had been collected by our 
airmen, showing every detail of the German 
positions 

During April and May our division had two 
goes at this rehearsal business. I remember 
that when we went out for the first one there 
was a good deal of excitement among the men, 
as it was clear to anyone that something big 
was coming off. 

We were marched for fifteen miles back of 
the lines and were there loaded on the match- 
box cars — funny Httle freight cars about half 
as big as ours — and after a bit we brought up 
in a Httle town in northern France, where the 
training field was located. This field of ours 
was only one of I don't know how many. 
When you consider that the Messines Ridge 

93 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

battle extended over a ten-mile front, perhaps 
more, and that every man on that front was 
as carefully rehearsed as he would have been 
as an actor in a drama, it will be understood 
that there must have been some scores of these 
fields. There must have been thousands of 
carefully instructed ojSicers as teachers. 

I know that we were duly impressed with 
the importance of what was coming off before 
we began. The billets at X. were better than 
usual. As a rule the billets of a batt are selected 
by advance agents, the quartermaster ser- 
geants, who go ahead when the troops are on 
the march and secure the quarters necessary. 
There is always keen rivalry for the best 
quarters to be had in any town, as it is neces- 
sary to use farm buildings and someone always 
has to put up in old chicken coops and some- 
times in a lately used stable. At X. our whole 
batt was extra comfortable. We had our 
sleeping quarters in big, clean bams, full cf 
hay. Most of us made a practice of going into 

94 



REHEARSAL 

the mows and burying ourselves for the night. 
The roofs were tight and we slept dry and clean 
and there didn't seem to be as many cooties 
as usual. The cootie, as everybody knows by 
now, is the common body louse, the soldier's 
worst enemy. 

There were a good many orchards all over 
the place and we spent a good deal of the time 
when we were on our own, loafing in the shade. 
On warm, dry nights it was a common thing 
for whole companies to sleep under the apple 
trees, sheltered only by Kttle tents made of our 
waterproof sheets. 

On the whole we had it cushy on that ten 
days' training. Each morning reveille was at 
6:30, breakfast at 7, and at 8 parade in full 
fighting order to the training field two miles 
away. Here they put us over the jumps by 
battahons. The duplicate of the German 
trenches was laid out on a mile-square field, 
with every detail exactly as we would find it 
when we went over. A platform, .rrounded 

95 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the field and here and there were wooden 
towers from which every detail could be seen. 
We would spend the entire morning up to one 
o'clock, going through extended formations 
and the study of objectives of each company. 

Getting through at one o'clock made it a 
short, cushy day, but we made up for that by 
the care with which we learned every move. 
The first thing in the morning we would line 
up and study the terrain. An officer would 
point out each strong point, each spot where 
machine g\ms would be likely to be emplaced, 
each separate traverse and every extra dan- 
gerous bit of ground. 

Then the companies would be put over the 
ground examining every inch of it. After that 
we went over again in exactly the order we 
would go in the attack. On certain days we 
had afternoon rehearsals. This consisted of 
studying photographs. We would gather by 
platoons in a big barn, and the officers who un- 
derstood the airplane pictures would go over 

96 




British Off! da! Phofos;raph. Copyright, International Film Service. 

A Duplicate of the German Trenches 



REHEARSAL 

them for us. These photographs were about 
two feet square. They would hold them up 
against the wall and point out this, that, and 
the other point and cross-examine the men. 
Shortly we had that terrain down so fine that 
every man could go to his own place with his 
eyes shut. 

Every man knew his objective, how he was 
to reach it, how fast he was to go, what he had 
to go through to get there, what he was to do 
at each stage of the advance. He knew just 
how things were going to look when he went 
over. Almost, it is no exaggeration to say, he 
knew just where his feet were to be set down 
on each step from the beginning to the end of 
the show. The only thing that could not be 
reckoned with was shot and shell. 

Like rehearsing anything else most of the 
men got letter perfect in a few days; but there 
were some, as there always are, who were stupid 
and who needed an awful lot of work to get 
the things into their heads. Two or three such 

97 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

men in a platoon may queer the whole game and 
are dangerous. The blockheads in a rehearsal 
of this sort nearly drive the officers mad. 

On the whole, however, the rehearsals went 
smoothly enough. And I think that the ex- 
citement and interest, and the afternoons on 
our own, conditioned the men to a point of 
keenness that proved valuable when the time 
came for the big attack. 

We played football or cricket almost every 
afternoon. At least the other men did. Per- 
sonally I never could get up an appetite for 
cricket. British football I never could get 
used to. They always put me in as goal tender. 
When I saw the ball coming I would grab it 
and start on an end nm. Then there would 
be a row. I used to try to get the gang to 
play baseball, but they could n't see it any more 
than I could see cricket. 

I was the only American in my batt and I 
continued to be a good deal of a curiosity to 
the Tommies throughout my service. The 

98 



REHEARSAL 

opinion is solidly grounded in the British mind, 
it seems to me, that Americans are all swank. 
They think that we are bluffers, braggers and 
hot-air merchants. 

They used to delight to get me started on the 
size of things over here. 

"Sye, Shellproof," somebody would call out, 
"'ow big is the blooming Stytes?'' 

Then I would start in and tell them how you 
could drop England down in the middle of 
Texas and lose it, and they would look at each 
other and grin. 

Then somebody would say, '^'Ow abaht 'igh 
'ouses, Mackie?" 

Whereupon I would tell all about the Wool- 
worth Building. 

This always brought the same frank com- 
ment. 

"Shellproof, yer a bHnkin' Kar. Couldn't 
never be no buildin' fifty-one stories 'igh." 

You could n't beat them. Tell 'em the plain 
unvarnished God's truth and they'd swear it 

99 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

was swank. At that they were good lads and 
true, and honest comrades, brave and kind. 

Americans, as I have said, were a curiosity 
in our batt. And that was odd, as there were 
said to be so many in the army. I remember 
running across one that proves the truth of the 
often-repeated statement that "it's a small 
world.'' 

When we were marching back to the front 
after our first rehearsal, we had halted by the 
roadside for the regular ten-minutes-in-the- 
hour rest. Another batt passed us going the 
other way. 

A young lieutenant eyed me as he passed at 
the rear of his men and then came back. 

"Is n't yoiu: name MacKay?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir," I said, saluting and standing at 
attention. "It used to be." 

"Did n't you," he went on, "used to live in 
Northampton, Massachusetts?" 

"I did sir," said I. "And who, may I ask, 
are you? " 

lOO 



REHEARSAL 

He laughed and said: "I am Clyde Baxter.'' ^ 
You could have knocked me down with a 
feather. When Baxter was a two-year-old 
baby I had lived on the same street with him. 
I was ten and they used to give me a dime to 
wheel Clyde out for the afternoon. Later, 
when I was fifteen or sixteen, I remember him 
as a youngster of about eight, and that was 
the last I ever saw of him until he hailed me 
by the roadside in Flanders. 

For old times' sake Baxter tried to get me 
transferred to his regiment and promised to 
get it cushy for me; but it never came off. 
Baxter was afterwards reported missing and 
so far as I know is either dead or perhaps a 
prisoner in Germany. I don't know which is 
worse. 

* I have given this man's name as Baxter, which is n't it at all, 
for this reason: any American who fought with the Allied forces 
was regarded as a franc-tireur, that is, as an unauthorized fighter, 
and to be regarded as a spy and executed as such. This would 
not be the case now. But at the time Baxter enhsted he was a 
neutral, and if he were a prisoner now in Germany and it be- 
came known that he was with the British before the United 
States entered the war he would probably be shot. 

lOI 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

In May the batt had twenty days in the 
trenches and in support, before coming out 
for the second rehearsal. The greater part of 
that twenty days was spent in trench raids 
and patrol work, as there was need of all the 
information that could be had as the time 
came on for the big attack. 

I did not take part in any of the raids. As 
a matter of fact I never took part in but one 
trench raid in all my seventeen months of ser- 
vice in the trenches. Right here I want to 
say something about trench raids and such 
stunts and volunteers for them. Every now 
and then I read something about some fellow 
who volimteers for special and dangerous duty 
as a habit. I never saw one of those men my- 
self. The man who says he volimteers more 
than once for trench raids and that sort of 
thing either misses the truth or is a most ex- 
traordinary person. I think that nearly every- 
body does volunteer once; and then he finds 
that once is enough. After that he does his 

I02 



REHEARSAL 

duty as it comes to him, and unless he is a 
fool for fighting he does n't go about hunting 
trouble. I know that this is contrary to the 
accepted ideas of gallantry and heroism; but 
it is the truth. 

All the trench raids that I have ever read 
about have been large successes. The only one 
that I was ever in was a flat failure. I am go- 
ing back and tell you about it. It will only 
take a minute and it does illustrate a point of 
British discipline that shows very clearly what 
makes the British Army great. 

This raid took place away back in the early 
days of 191 6. The lines were about fwe hun- 
dred yards apart. The customary orders 
were given out to cross over into the German 
trenches and take prisoners and do all the 
damage possible. We sneaked across with 
twelve men and one officer, a Heutenant. The 
Fritzies had three lines of wire outside of their 
trench, narrow lines not more than six feet 
wide and perhaps ten yards apart. There had 

103 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

been no artillery preparation and it was up to 
us to get through the wire without making 
any noise and to get back if we coxild. We 
managed to get beyond the first two lines of 
wire and would have got through the other 
but through some miscarraige of orders our 
own machine guns and hght artillery opened 
up on us. 

We hugged the ground, but not quick 
enough, and three of our men clicked. Worse 
than that, the lieutenant, who was just get- 
ting through the wire, got tangled up with one 
leg caught in a loop or something; anyhow he 
couldn't get loose and we couldn't pry him 
out, try as we would. The Germans had got 
"windy'' by this time and were sending up 
Hghts. So it was plain enough that the raid 
was all off. The officer ordered us to go it on 
our own and to get back as best we could. He 
was to be left behind. After the custom the 
non-com detailed a man to stop with the officer 
on the chance that he might do some good and 

104 



REHEARSAL 

get the lieutenant loose before daylight. This 
is always done when an officer gets in a posi- 
tion where he cannot move. He mustn't be 
left alone. A man has to stay, no matter how 
hopeless the situation. It is rough on the man, 
but it is part of the game. 

Well, we quit the lieutenant and the man, 
and worked back across No Man's Land, and 
made it into our own trenches without any 
further casualties. About an hour later, just 
before dawn, the man who had been left came 
crawling in. He had deserted the officer. The 
lieutenant never was heard from, and was 
probably either killed or taken prisoner. The 
man who deserted him was promptly executed. 

But to get back to the trenches. After ten 
days spent in the front line and ten more in 
supports, we were moved back again to the 
little town thirty miles to the rear where the 
rehearsal field was. They gave it to us good 
on this dose of getting ready. It was hard 
work all the time, morning, noon and night. 

105 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

It got so we could do every move in our sleep. 
Besides which they gave us the regular 
"physical jerks," that is, the setting-up exer- 
cises without rifles, in extra sessions. 

The word went around that the big attack 
was to come off the tenth of June. There was 
the regular amount of gossip and a thousand 
different rumors as to what was to happen and 
on how wide a front the offensive was to be 
made. It was always the same way. The rank 
and file knew as much as old Haig when any- 
thing was to come off. The only difference 
between headquarters and the men was that 
the men knew so many things that weren't 
so. In general, though, pretty nearly every- 
thing of consequence seeped down to the men 
in one form or another. The trouble was to 
sort out the true from the false. 

On the Messines Ridge attack the powers 
at the head of things fooled us purposely. 
They drilled the idea into us that the attack 
was to come off the tenth of Jime and every 

io6 



REHEARSAL 

man had that notion firmly imbedded in his 
mind. There was a good reason for this. The 
German secret service was very active. They, 
no doubt, had spies behind our lines and per- 
haps in the very army. 

Now the mining situation was, as I have 
said, pecuHar. Both sides were playing awfully 
close. Hill 60 was full of high explosive placed 
by our sappers. And lower down in the hill 
the Germans had mined and had no doubt 
placed more or less dynamite. 

Also, as I have said, they had come across 
under our support tunnel. These mining op- 
erations cannot be kept secret by either side 
for long. The Royal Engineer officers are 
listening all the time. They have an instru- 
ment of the nature of a microphone, a jigger 
that is stuck down in the ground and a kind 
of stethoscope affair to put to the ears. With 
this they can hear the slightest tap or scrape. 
After a good deal of practice they get so they 
can tell whether digging is going on and how 

107 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

far advanced the mining processes are. When 
the enemy begins bringing in boxes of explosive 
that is betrayed, too, by the changed sound. 
If the enemy is nearly ready to set off his 
mines and the R. E. ofhcers detect it, why, of 
course, our men are ordered from the vicinity. 
The trick is to wait until the last possible mo- 
ment. It is shivery business trying to out- 
guess the Heinies on this sort of thing. 

WeU, on this Hill 60 business we were going 
close to the limit. The engineers had been 
listening to the digging under our support tim- 
nel and they knew that the Germans had 
nearly finished bringing in the boxes of high 
explosive — that they were almost ready to 
touch her off. Which would have been a 
disaster. 

This support tunnel which I have men- 
tioned was an interesting piece of work and 
one of the neatest ever constructed in the 
British lines. In fact it was worthy of the best 
efforts of the Germans in construction for the 

108 



REHEARSAL 

comfort of the men. The tunnel ran back 
from the front line right in the heart of the 
ridge for about six hundred yards, a hole four 
feet wide and high enough to let a man stand 
up. Then for about four hundred yards it was 
nine feet wide and eight feet high, and on each 
side there were tiers of double-decked beds, 
leaving a little alley between about a yard 
wide. Running down at each side were short 
galleries, also furnished with the double- 
decked beds. The whole place was lighted 
with electricity. It had been built by Cana- 
dian and Australian engineers and was per- 
fectly safe from shell-fire except around the 
edges, where a shell would come through now 
and then, but not enough to worry about. 
The place held three thousand men and kept 
them dry and comfortable and safe and ready 
for an instant charge when the time came for 
that charge. The delicate part of the situa- 
tion was that the Germans could send up that 
tunnel with its three thousand soldiers any 

109 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

time they thought best. We learned after the 
battle of Messines Eidge that they had planned 
to touch us off on the night of the ninth. You 
see the widely spread information that we were 
to blow up Hill 60 and start the attack on 
Jime 10 had by some mysterious method 
reached the Germans; and they were planning 
to beat us to it by one day. It was uncom- 
fortably close figuring either way. 

But we outguessed them. On the night of 
Jime 6 my ba-tt was brought up from the rear 
and quartered in the timnel, and about eleven 
o'clock the order went around that the attack 
was to come off the next morning at exactly 
3:10. We had fooled Fritzie by putting the 
show forward three days from the time origi- 
nally given out. 

The artillery preparation had begim in a 
mild but continuous way ten days before, and 
had been gradually increased, until on the night 
of the sixth, when we came up, it was one 
gigantic throb of sound after another, riding 

no 



REHEARSAL 

down the wind. Although we knew that the 
attack was slated for 3:10, I think that most 
of us slept well. I know that I did. 

At three o'clock somebody waked me. All 
hands were sitting round waiting, waiting and 
wondering how much of a crash the million 
pounds of ammonal under Hill 60 would make. 
It will be remembered that Lloyd George 
heard the explosion one hundred and thirty 
miles away in London. We were only a mile 
and a half away, and we were n't at all sure 
that it would n't stun us, even sheltered as we 
were. 

We all held our breaths as 3:10 approached 
and kept our eyes on the wrist watches. On 
the tick the hill went off. There were just two 
very heavy rumbles and the tunnel and the 
ridge over it rocked like a boat. A man who 
had been standing in the alley in front of my 
bed tottered and grabbed as a man will on a 
rocking elevated train. I felt the cot move 
imder me as much as two or three inches. It 

III 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

was all over in a matter of seconds and was 
disappointing. And then the order passed and 
out we all crowded to the exits to be ready to 
go over in the charge at 3:15, which was zero. 

After the battle of the Ridge it was found 
that the Germans had completed the mining 
under our quarters and had their ammonal in 
and connected up. It will always be a mystery 
why they did n't set us off. I am fully satis- 
fied that they didn't, for when I go west I 
want it to be in the open with the blue sky 
overhead. I was sorry for the thousands of 
Fritzies who had been pulverized in the blow- 
ing up of Hill 60. 



112 



CHAPTER XI 

Messines Ridge 

The big explosion that destroyed Hill 60 on 
the morning of June 7 broke the tension and 
brought us all up on our toes. As the last 
rumble and quiver died away and the world 
stopped rocking under our feet we all picked up 
our rifles and trooped out of the support timnel 
and into the newly made trench called Rennie 
Street, which had lately been dug; it was about 
three feet deep, parallel to the front line trench 
and about a third of a mile behind it. The end 
of Rennie Street touched the support tunnel. 

It was just Hght when we got out and into 
the trench. It was one of those misty mornings 
so common in Flanders, with promise of fair 
weather overhead, but with a thin haze over 
everythiag. Still and aU, we could see to almost 
any distance well enough. Away off there to 

113 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the left and in front, where Hill 60 had been the 
night before, there was a yawning pit. The 
hill was gone. It seems unbelievable, but that 
great hill was, so far as we could tell from where 
we were, completely gone. 

Out in front and between us and the front 
trench the ground was reasonably smooth but 
sloping upward a Httle. The artillery prepara- 
tion had been going on for ten days and was now 
at its height. Shells by the thousand were 
squealing overhead from our guns in the rear. 
The Fritzies were sending back a lot, and the 
open field we had to cover was getting most of 
them, or that's the way it looked from Rennie 
Street. 

Everybody was looking back over the terrain 
toward Ypres, expecting the tanks to come up. 
It had been rumored all along that the tanks 
were to take part in the attack, and a good many 
of the men who had never seen them in action 
were curious. Once on the rehearsals we had 
run across a squadron of the land ships coming 

114 



MESSINES RIDGE 

up to the front. I had gone into the battle of 
High Wood on the Somme with the first of the 
tanks and recalled how easy they had made 
things there, and sure hoped that we were to 
have the mechanical monsters with us at Mes- 
sines. But it was n't to be. The tanks did go 
into this battle, but farther down the line. It 
was said afterwards that the ground was too 
rough at Messines and beyond, and that there 
was too much mined area to make it worth 
while to take the chance with the big crawlers. 

We squatted in the three-foot ditch and 
waited for zero and the whistle that would take 
us out and over, and hoped that nothing would 
get us before we started. 

That's one of the things that I noticed over 
there. When I was going over in an attack my 
mind seemed to run tc^rhopes that I would n't 
get it in the early stages of the game. I was n't 
wishing for anything later on, either, but I 
somehow seemed to have the idea that it would 
be a waste of my time if I got hit at the begin- 

115 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

ning of the show. Same way about the other 
fellows. I pitied a man a good deal more if he 
was hit when we first went over than I did some 
chap that went west late in the day. It sort of 
felt as though the chap that got his early had n't 
had a chance to do his bit. Fimny how a man's 
mind runs on things like that. 

I think perhaps I 'd better put in a little map 
with this story. I am not much of an artist, but 
a rough sketch will serve to show where we went 
on that day of the opening of Messines Ridge. 
This is the description of a hard day's work 
that we had been getting ready for for months, 
and the locations will be clearer to the reader 
with a map. The distances shown in the sketch 
are not in the correct proportion — not drawn 
to scale, that is — but they do show general 
directions. 

My company occupied the part of Rennic 
Street near the support tunnel. We weren't 
there long, but it was time enough to work up a 
cordial dread for the slow march we had to 

ii6 



MESSINES RIDGE 



make across the shell-swept open to the trenches. 
It is the horrible part of any prepared long ad- 
vance that it goes so slow. There is so much 




oBjBcme 



^/u so j£croi^ 



fi£NNIE 



Sketch-map drawn by the author, showing the relative positions 
in the advance from Hill 60 at the Battle of Messines Ridge. The 
dotted line shows the course covered by the author's company. 

waiting under fire and so little chance to get at 
the enemy and have it over with. 

We saw the smoke barrage begin in front of 
our front line at about a minute of zero. This 

117 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

was a curtain of shells that shook out great 
lumpy clouds of sooty black smoke in front of 
our men and effectually screened them from 
rifle fire and machine guns. That is, it con- 
cealed them from the enemy, but as the smoke 
barrage works out the enemy only had to pump 
his lead into the cloud low down to be effective 
enough. 

At zero, that is at 3:15, we saw the front 
waves, two of them, go over from the front 
trench and follow the barrage. About three 
minutes later we got our orders and out we 
went. 

We had left our packs behind and were flying 
light. We had each two bandoliers slung across 
our shoulders, a haversack with two days' 
rations, a water-bottle and the rifle slung across 
the back. We carried six bombs each in our 
pockets. 

Just before we went over I lit my pipe and 
started the march forward with my hands in my 
pockets about the way I would if I was strolling 

ii8 



MESSINES RIDGE 

across Boston Common on a bright Sunday 
morning. This attitude of imconcern wasn't 
swank — it was n't what the papers call bra- 
vado. I lit the pipe because I never smoke 
cigarettes, and I put my hands in my pockets 
because there wasn't any other place to put 
them. As a matter of fact I was scared stiff and 
didn't think for a minute that I would get 
across the first two hundred yards of the ad- 
vance. I said so between my teeth to a mate 
of mine named Baggot, who was keeping touch 
with me at my left. "Baggsie" was another 
bantam. He had enlisted with me and was 
smaller than I, being only five feet two inches. 
Baggot was so short in the legs that he never 
could get pants to fit. The smallest size would 
kind of ooze out over his putties and slop around 
in wrinkles down near his ankles. He was 
always hitching them up. Baggot was a pipe 
smoker, too, and when I started to growl he 
grinned at me and puffed his Uttle black clay 
and says: 

119 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

"Cheerio, Macksie! T' 'ell wif th' shells. So 
I keeps th' cutty alight and th' trousies up, wot 
do I care?" 

And that shows that it's a fine thing in times 
of action to have something to keep your mind 
off the danger. 

We paddled out across those five hundred 
yards that lay between us and No Man's Land, 
and I '11 swear that we did n't go more than a 
mile an hour. We reached our trenches and 
stopped there a while, unslung the rifles, fixed 
bayonets, and then went along over. In the 
German trenches we found nothing but dead 
Fritzies and several squads of prisoners, each 
twenty or thirty guarded by a lone Tommy. 
On from there we slewed around on a right 
incline as per the instructions learned in re- 
hearsals and hit the canal. 

This was about fifty feet wide and there was 
no bridge. We hesitated for a bit on the near 
side because we didn't know how deep the 
water was and there was a lot of bodies in it. 

1 20 



MESSINES RIDGE 

There was an argument of a few seconds among 
the officers as to whether the place was fordable. 
And then in we went. 

Colonel Kemble went down at this point, hit 
in the stomach by a shell fragment. Two 
stretcher-bearers carried him off to the rear and 
along with him two more officers who had gone 
down. The colonel was very popular with both 
officers and men. He was much more demo- 
cratic than most English officers. Perhaps this 
was because he had been before the war the 
principal of one of the largest private schools in 
England. I am inclined to think that he knew 
soldiers because he knew boys, for the Tommy 
is only a grown-up kid when you come right 
down to facts. 

We sloshed into the canal, and I thought be- 
fore I reached the far side that I would n't make 
it. The water was up to my armpits, and when 
I was in the middle I began to wish that I was 
more than five feet three. We made it across 
all right, and as we clambered up the bank we 

121 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

ran slam-bang into a galling machine gim fire. 
Off a few himdred yards to the right and up a 
clight rise were the remains of an old wood. 
There was a lot of fairly big stumps and some 
piled-up wreckage of smashed trees, and every 
spot in this tangle had a typewriter, and they 
were simply spewing bullets at us. For some 
reason the British troops from the right of our 
line, who were supposed to have come up and 
silenced this bunch of Huns in the wood, had 
not arrived, and the Heinies were free to give it 
to us good and plenty. 

We started to charge the wood, but our ofii- 
cers chased us back, and along we went on the 
route that had been laid out for us in the battle 
plans. You see, we could n't vary from the 
schedule, no matter what came up; and we 
walked through that rain of bullets with our 
heads down, cursing the luck and the orders 
that would n't let us strike back. 

The activity of those guns in the wood cost 
us a good deal before the day was over. Just 

122 



MESSINES RIDGE 

beyond the wood we met a lot of our wounded 
going back. They had to go through the ma- 
chine gun fire, too. At the top of the canal bank 
they were perfect marks, and as the barrage 
smoke was Hf ted the Germans simply took their 
time and slaughtered the returning wounded. 
There must be hundreds of reported missing 
men resting in the bottom of the Yser Canal at 
the point where our batt crossed. 

Beyond the wood we ran into a heavy Ger- 
man shell-fire. There was supposed to be a 
double line of German trenches here, and it was 
in the orders that we should rest in them for a 
short time before going on. Baggot and an- 
other chap and I had fallen behind our com- 
pany, and when we hit the trench we tumbled 
in. There were a good many dead and wounded 
Germans there, and some of our men, also dead. 
The first wave had evidently had a good deal 
of a job in taking this place. 

The three of us hunted up a dugout that was 
serviceable and crawled into it. There were 

123 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

three dead Germans in there and we shoved 
them out and fell on the floor exhausted. None 
of us was able to talk. We had come not more 
than three-quarters of a mile and had n't run a 
step, and yet I was panting and wheezing. But 
I was hanging on to the old pipe. Baggot had 
his, too — the stem of it. A bullet or some- 
thing had carried away the bowl. I remember 
his taking the bit of clay stem out of his mouth 
and looking at it very silly and saying over and 
over to himself, "Gawd lumme. She's gone. 
She 's gone. ' ' And then he 'd giggle. 

We lay there in the dugout quite a while — I 
don't know how long — and after a bit pulled 
ourselves together some and had a drag out of 
the water-bottles. There was an awful din of 
smashing shells and the scream of others going 
over, and there was a wounded German out in 
the bay that kept hollering from time to time. 
As we got our wind back and worked around 
into a little more sane frame of mind we began 
to talk about getting on. We all of us knew we 

124 



MESSINES RIDGE 

had n't any business stopping where we were, 
but we did n't want to get out of the shelter. 
We were trying to convince ourselves that we 
had a good right to stay when a couple of shells 
hit right near us — judging from the sound, in 
the same traverse — and a lot of mud came 
down the stairs. With that we crawled out and 
started to hunt up the rest of the company. 

Out of the trench we ran into another hail 
of bullets. They were knocking up the dirt all 
about and I '11 swear that I felt several graze my 
legs. We could n't see a single German any- 
where to shoot at, and could n't make out where 
the fire was coming from. Probably the bulk of 
it was from the wood which was now behind us 
and to the right. 

We fell into a shell-hole after a very few 
steps and lay low. Then some wounded came 
along and told us that our company was in a 
stretch of trench about sixty yards ahead. We 
got out and legged it. Baggot never got there. 
He went down hit in three or four places, the 

125 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

worst in the shoulder. We dragged him into a 
shell-hole and left him. I never saw him again, 
but afterwards heard that he came through and 
got Blighty on the woimds. 

My other mate, Cowles, and I made the 
trench and found our company there. They 
told us that the casualties had been light so far. 
That didn't seem reasonable after what we 
had been through, and I asked a sergeant what 
was meant by light. He said we had lost about 
twenty per cent. 

We had still eight himdred yards to go to make 
our objective and we soon were ordered out to 
start again. This time we got a shell-fire that 
was worse than anything else I saw over there. 
At least half a dozen shells struck so close to me 
that I was staggered by the shock and yet 
was n't scratched. Men seemed to be going 
down by scores. Two more ofi&cers fell, leaving 
the company in command of a second lieutenant. 
Still we kept on and soon found ourselves ap- 
proaching the White Chateau. 

126 



MESSINES RIDGE 

The White Chateau was a country place sur- 
rounded by a little park which still had some of 
the trees standing. The house was a big one 
painted white and over it flew the Red Cross 
flag. In rehearsals we had been told that this 
place was a Red Cross station and that we were 
to let it strictly alone. A detail from the last 
wave was to take it over and guard it. As we 
came up to the Chateau we split and were going 
by on each side when the house began to belch 
machine gun fire. 

How anybody managed to live through that 
fire I don't know. It was at short range and 
there was a lot of guns. Right here we dis- 
obeyed orders. We did n't pass the Chateau as 
we had the wood back by the canal. Not we. 
Led by the little ofi&cer man, who was a gaUant 
lad, we turned as one man and made for the 
Chateau. We charged without orders right up 
through the remains of the little park and up to 
the house, and began heaving bombs through 
the windows. 

127 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

I came up on one side along with six or seven 
other chaps. I remember chucking two bombs 
through a window, and when the explosions 
came off, another window, which had been 
closed and unbroken before, heaved out and 
came away from the casement bodily. Then a 
sergeant yelled to let up on the bombs and 
hollered: "Now, then, up with you two little 
fellers. Pitch 'em in, lads." The men grabbed 
me and one other and heaved us up and 
into the window. With my himdred pounds' 
weight, and a boost by a pair of big hus- 
kies, I simply floated up and Ht on the broad 
window-sill. 

The inside of the room I landed in was a 
mess. There was a machine gun upset near the 
window and a lot of bodies all about. I stood 
there staring through the smoke for a minute, 
and then stepped into the room carefully and 
easy, right up on my toes, with the rifle poised 
all ready to stick the trusty Httle old pin into 
anything that moved. A Hun over there in the 

128 



MESSINES RIDGE 

comer rolled over and held up a good arm and 
slobbered out, "Mercy, kamarad." 

Then I yelled, " Come out of that. Come out, 
ye blankety blank Boches." I cussed real cor- 
dial for a minute or so, and then a door opened 
slowly and out sneaked three Germans, whining 
"Kamarad,'' with their hands up. 

Well, we cleaned that Chateau. They did n't 
make a tap of resistance after we got inside, 
and we harvested forty-odd men and four or five 
officers. The officers were all ia the cellar, and 
they had a perfect telephone system to other 
parts of the Hne. Upstairs in the tower there 
was a regimental sergeant-major with tele- 
phones leading down from his lookout to the cel- 
lar. There were two huge red crosses painted on 
the white roof to keep off the airplanes, and the 
cross was painted on all four sides of the house. 
There cannot be any doubt that the Huns had 
used this place for observation under the pro- 
tection of the Red Cross for a long time. There 
was nothing about the Chateau to show that it 

129 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

had ever been used for a hospital. It was a 
clear case of treachery and the use of the Red 
Cross for a miHtary blind. We left a hundred 
dead in the Chateau besides the prisoners, but 
their loss could n't have been a tenth part of 
what they had inflicted on us through their dirty 
work. It's this kind of thing that will win the 
war for the Hun — if the rest of the world lets 
him win. If he does win, here's one American 
citizen and beHever in world democracy that 
will go away to the head waters of the Amazon 
or some such place and bury himself in the 
jungle to associate with the decent beasts. 

After cleaning out the Chateau we might have 
stayed there without danger, as the German bat- 
teries evidently had orders not to shell the place 
and nothiQg was coming down within a himdred 
yards. They had the range perfect, as was 
shown by the way the shells fell all aroimd the 
Chateau and did n't land on it. Well, we 
could n't stop there, as we had to make our 
objective, which was stiQ about three hundred 

130 



MESSINES RIDGE 

yards away. So we got out and went for it. 
Half that distance was under heavy shell-fire. 
I made it in approximately thirty seconds. 
Nobody timed me, but I am confident that I 
broke all records for the three hundred yards, 
either professional or amateur. 

I fell into the trench and sat on the fire-step 
puffing at the old pipe like a steam engine. She 
was out, but that did n't make any difference. 
Somebody ran up and said: 

" Mack, you 're hit. Get that tunic off." 

I looked and found that I was covered with 
blood all down the left side. I began to get 
faint and imagined that my shoulder pained me. 
After a while I peeled out of the jacket slow 
and easy and there was n't a scratch on me. I 
never did know where that blood came from. 

After a short rest we all turned to and began 
to consoKdate the trench and to turn it around. 
The traverses were in good shape and wide, and 
about all we had to do was to transfer the sand- 
bags and put in a new fire-step. The shell and 

131 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

machine gun fire was still heavy, and there were 
scores of airplanes flying very low. Some came 
down so near that we waved to the pilots and 
yelled to them and they answered. 

After we had the trench tidied up we had 
breakfast. We were all as hungry as wolves. I 
had a tin of cold bully beef and a chunk of 
rooty — that's trench lingo for bread — and 
found an onion snuggled down in the corner of 
the haversack, and, beheve me, that meal tasted 
good. 

We had to stand to all day for the expected 
counter-attack, but it did n't come. Along 
around dusk a funny stunt came ofl and I had 
the pleasure of seeing the only German I was 
ever sorry for. We were well consohdated and 
were keeping a sharp lookout over the parapet 
when suddenly out of a shell-hole about twenty 
yards in front there jumped a German soldier 
who started to leg it for the German lines. He 
had a sandbag over his shoulder. Our one 
officer shouted to the fellow to stop, but he 

132 



MESSINES RIDGE 

kept going and about twenty of us cut loose at 
him. He went down in a heap and, still hanging 
on to his precious sack, crawled into a shallow 
shell-hole. The lieutenant was a good deal 
worried about that bag and rather thought that 
it must contain papers of some kind. 

After dark we sent two men out and brought 
the Fritzie back. He had more holes in him than 
a colander, but he was still alive and he still 
hung to the bag. We had to pry him away from 
it. The lieutenant opened the sack with large 
expectations of valuable documents and pulled 
out — you wouldn't guess it in a thousand 
years — just two bottles of seltzer water. 

It happened that our officer spoke German 
and he cross-examined the Fritz. The fellow 
said that he was an officer's servant and had 
been told to save that soda water, and he had 
done his best to obey orders. We could n't help 
being sorry for the simple-mindedness of the poor 
beggar, and we could n't help admiring his nerve 
in trying to do his duty as he saw it. He may 

133 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

have been one of those men whose minds are 
just big enough to hold one idea at a time. 
There 's a lot of them that way. 

For that matter almost everybody does queer 
things in the excitement of battle. And nearly 
everyone has the experience of seeming to lose 
sense of time and proportion. 

In this day's work at Messines Ridge that I 
have just told, one thing comes back to me as 
a profound mystery. 

We started on our advance at 3 115, as I have 
told. We went forward about a mile and a half. 
We stopped perhaps ten minutes at the front 
trench, ten more in the German trench, maybe 
half an hour in the German dugout and about 
an hour at the White Chateau. We arrived at 
our objective at nine o'clock. In other words, 
it had taken us four hours' actual marching to 
traverse a mile and a half. 

As I look back on that day it seems to me 
that nearly every move is clear. I can remem- 
ber many trifling details; but to save my life I 

134 



MESSINES RIDGE 

cannot account for that four hours. It might 
well have taken an hour to make the mile and 
a half march. But what about the other three 
hours? What was I doing? How were those 
hours occupied? I don't know. 

Another thing that puzzles me is that when 
the day was over I had not fired one single shot 
from my rifle. But my bombs were gone, and 
I know that at the White Chateau I got enough 
Germans for a mess. 



135 



CHAPTER XII 

Discipline 

In the British army the discipline is probably 
as strict or stricter than in any army in the 
world. The French have nothing like it. 
Possibly the old French Foreign Legion held 
its men with a harder hand. Discipline is 
safely seventy-five per cent of an army's 
effectiveness. Men who obey without question 
stay put and don't give ground when they 
are Hcked. Give them intelligent officers and 
there can be none better. Discipline is what 
makes the British Tommy great. 

The punishments for a military crime are 
very severe. Any violation of military orders 
or regulations is caUed a crime; and a careful 
list of these is kept which is called a crime- 
sheet. I am proud to say that I was discharged 
with a clean sheet. Of course I violated rules 

136 



DISCIPLINE 

many times, but was lucky and didn't get 
caught. I have already told of one crime I 
committed; but that was under provocation, 
and while I might have been given Field 
Punishment No. i the officer was a good feUow 
and let me off with three days C. B. (Confined 
to Barracks.) 

On active service a man is liable to get 
extreme punishment for what seem little 
things. In fact it does n't take such a lot to 
get him shot. Field Punishment No. i is bad 
enough and is dished out frequently. This 
consists of being confined to the guard-room 
and, for two hours each day, being tied to the 
wheel of a limber, — spread-eagled. This is 
called crucifixion. 

In the early days of the war the death 
sentence was common, as a general thing being 
inflicted for disobeying orders. In a good 
many cases officers used bad judgment and 
thus actually murdered their men. That is 
what it amoimted to. I recall one case when 

137 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

we were being shelled and our wires were 
being knocked to pieces. It was broad day- 
light. An officer came along and ordered a 
man to go out to repair the wire. If the officer 
had known anything at all he would never have 
given the order. The man came back at him. 

"It is sure death to go out there now, sir. 
I don't think I ought to go." 

The man was put imder arrest and a few 
weeks later was shot. 

I knew of one case of a man in the York and 
Lancaster Regiment who had deserted and 
made his way to England. How he got across 
was a mystery. The man's own wife gave him 
up to the police and he was returned to the 
regiment for court-martial. He had no defense 
whatever except that he had been a good 
soldier with a clean record before that and 
he was found guilty and sentenced to death. 

One of the firing-squad told me of what 
happened when they took this man out to 
shoot him. As he was being marched out from 

138 




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German Translation of President Wilson's War Message 

OF April 2, 191 7 
Taken from the body of a German soldier at Messines Ridge 



DISCIPLINE 

the guard-house to the brick wall in the rear 
the Colonel appeared on the scene. The man 
was placed and they pinned a piece of paper 
over his heart. Just then the Colonel stepped 
out and ordered the squad to order arms. Then 
he had the man marched up to him and said, 

"Private Blank, tell me how you got back 
to England and I will give you a reprieve and 
try to get you a commutation.'' 

The man thought for a moment and said, 

"I can't do it, sir. It will get some other 
chap into trouble." 

The Colonel ordered him back to the wall. 
And after the man had been shot he said to 
the firing-squad, 

" Men, look weU on this poor fellow. He was 
a soldier and a man. It is heart-breaking to 
lose him in this way. But remember, this is 
discipline." 

There was a man in my batt who had gone 
out at the beginning and who had served right 
through to the Battle of Messines Ridge. He 

139 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

was as brave as they make them. But just 
before Messines, while we were on rehearsals, 
he deserted. He had been shell-shocked and 
was not responsible. After deserting he went 
directly within a day or two and gave himself 
up. He was placed under arrest and was under 
guard during Messines Ridge. The batt did 
so well in that fight that out of consideration 
for the other men and to avoid the disgrace 
that would attach to the batt he was let down 
light with Field Punishment No. i. As soon 
as he had served that out he went straight ofif 
and deserted again. Now anybody should 
have known that there was something the 
matter with him; but they tried him and 
sentenced him to death. Before the execution 
he got a rifle from the sentry at the guard- 
house and committed suicide. 

Discipline! It is the greatest thing in the 
world for the soldier. It means that he^has 
to shine his buttons when there is no need of 
it except that it makes him think of obeying 

140 



DISCIPLINE 

orders and keeping up morale. He shaves 
under difficulties for the same reason. And he 
does a hundred other things for no reason that 
is apparent but that make him obey instinc- 
tively. 

Discipline and morale win battles and stave 
off defeat. 



141 



CHAPTER XIII 

HOLLEBEKE 

I WONDER how many people who have been 
reading war books in general have noticed 
that writers usually teU the stories of victory, 
rarely of defeat. And yet when you come right 
down to cases, there is nothing more ithrilling 
than hanging on and putting up a losing fight 
against odds. There is nothing that the 
British soldier does so weU or that he Ukes 
so well. It is the thing that makes him great. 
And it is a thing that he has had to do oftener 
than ever appears in the official communiques. 

Looking back on my own experience, I 
think that the hammering that the Fritzies 
gave our batt — and several others — in the 
counter-attacks after the Battle of Messines 
Ridge would have made the average rookie 

142 



HOLLEBEKE 

think that war was hell with a few man-made 
trimmings and no glory whatever. 

We had a good long rest after Messines; and 
God knows we needed it. When we were 
ordered back into the line there was the custom- 
ary grousing, as we had expected to be trans- 
ferred to an easier sector. Tommy always 
thinks that the particular place he happens to 
be in at the time is the hardest on the whole 
front; and he always expects to be shifted after 
a rest; and if he isn't he grouses to his own 
satisfaction and to the amusement of his offi- 
cers, who know that he would kick, anyhow. 

This time we were ordered up to the town 
of HoUebeke, or what had been the town. 
The first night we moved up to within about 
two miles of the lines and then lay in shell- 
holes. That night it rained cats and dogs. 
We had no shelter whatever, but wrapped 
ourselves up in the overcoats and the water- 
proof sheets and just settled down in the soft 
mud. Waterproof sheets as issued in the 

143 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

British Army are waterproof until they wet 
through, which is in about an hour of good, 
hard rain. After that they serve splendidly to 
keep the moisture in. We were saturated 
when day broke. It was bright and clear 
after the downpour and we began to steam. 
Pretty soon everybody was parboiled. And 
the cooties were nibbling. I don't think a 
soldier is ever as uncomfortable as when he 
is moist and warm. His hide seems to soften 
up so the cootie can get his hooks in. We foimd 
we were likely to stop in those holes for the 
greater part of the day, so most of us stripped 
to the waist and had shirt-hunts and got dried 
out some. It was here that I introduced the 
anti-cootie method that for a while was popular 
with our fellows. It was simply to turn the 
garment inside out after the cleaning out of the 
seams during the shirt-himt. The theory was 
that the animal would walk himself tired getting 
from the outside to the inside. Most of the 
chaps said, however, that the cootie had such 

144 



HOLLEBEKE 

an appetite after his long trip that he bit all 
the harder. 

It was interesting to look over the surround- 
ing country that day from the shell-holes. This 
was the same ground that we had fought over 
on the seventh of June. When we had last 
passed over it, shot and shell had been falling 
thick and fast and most of us had never ex- 
pected to pass that way again. It looked 
different now. During our little rest to the 
rear the engineers had been busy and roads 
had been constructed and reconstructed. On 
any advance the bringing up of good roads 
is of the utmost importance, as supplies and 
ammo and the big guns have to be got up 
immediately or it is impossible to hold against 
counter-attacks. 

We could see the White Chateau away off 
there in front and to the right — the place 
where we had cleaned out the treacherous 
Hun from his hiding-place behind the Red 
Cross flag. A wide and very good road led 

145 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

up to the Chateau. The remains of an old 
German light railroad led away from where 
we were to this new road. Just after sundown 
we started for the front, following this old 
rail and eventually hitting the main road. 
It was bright moonlight. Things were com- 
paratively quiet all along the line. On the way 
up we passed several fatigues cleaning up, 
and several carrying parties going out after 
grub or ammo. 

They told us that Fritz had been very 
meek for some days and that it was nearly 
time for a savage counter-attack. In fact 
such an attack was expected at any moment. 
Just our luck to run into a jam like that! 
We had been in the thick at Messines and 
here we were coming back to take the pimish- 
ment on the coimter. 

"It's good weVe got a navy," says one 
fellow. 

"Wot th' blinkin' 'ell's the use," says 
somebody else. "We got to fight the whole 

146 



HOLLEBEKE 

bloomin' war, that's plain.'' And then some- 
one struck up ^^Pack up your Troubles in 
Your Old Kit Bag." An officer stopped that, 
and the rest of the trip we just groused under 
our breaths. 

Not a shell came over imtil we were nearly 
up to the Chateau. Then at Oak Dump they 
came, good and plenty. The first one burst 
near me and killed two men who were elbow 
to elbow with me. We tried to get into artillery 
formation and scattered. Shortly we were 
all over the place and had lost touch wdth all 
our officers. But nearly all of us knew the 
way up to the front, and all through the night 
we straggled in by threes and fours. 

The front line was in the town of HoUebeke. 
This had been a considerable place before 
the war but it had been battered into powder. 
No semblance of a wall was standing. Even 
the cellars had been filled in and levelled off 
with fine crushed debris. It was possible to 
make out the outlines of the streets and some 

147 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

of the larger buildings, but that was all. HoUe- 
beke, when we found it, was a name — a sign- 
board. 

The trench was a good one, new and dry. 
For a bloomin' wonder someone had done a 
good job of trench-building. There was no 
parapet of sandbags, but the ditch was deep 
and well drained and the fire-step was solid 
and at the right height. 

There was the customary lack of dugouts 
— nothing you could really call more than a 
head-and-shoulder shelter. 

The rumor went around that first night 
that there was almost certain to be a German 
counter-attack within a few hours. There 
was some reason for expecting this, for, al- 
though Fritz had been somewhat tame, he 
had a victory to his credit that heartened him 
a lot. 

It had happened in this way. During the 
time that our batt was out resting the British 
had tried an attack in front of HoUebeke that 

148 



HOLLEBEKE 

had been a complete washout. Not only had 
it been a failure but it had been terribly costly. 

The Germans seemed to know every move 
that our troops were about to make, their 
objectives, the number to come to each point, 
and so on; and they had met the British at 
every point with perfect preparation. 

The reason for this was disclosed to the men 
ofhcially, — that is, each batt was paraded 
and a statement was read as issued from head- 
quarters. This was it. 

Two days before the attack a sergeant named 
Phillips from a Welsh regiment had been taken 
prisoner by the Germans. When the attack 
came off a German officer was taken prisoner, 
and on him were found documents giving 
every detail of the proposed attack and the 
statement that the information had been 
furnished by the man Phillips who had dis- 
appeared. Now it was not known whether or 
not Phillips was a deserter or whether he had 
given up the information under torture, or 

149 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

what. It was enough that he had given the 
information. And the story was read out to 
us as a warning. 

I do not mention this occurrence to give 
the impression that it was a common thing 
for inside plans to be betrayed by men in our 
ranks. It was not. As a rule a British soldier 
will suffer the worst kind of third degree before 
he will give up. It simply shows how easy it is 
for a man to ruin the plans of his superiors 
and play into the hands of the enemy. 

It can readily be seen what a disastrous 
thing it might turn out to have alien enemies 
in our army. I personally believe that in a 
great nation like ours, which is really a con- 
glomerate of many nationalities, we should 
examine very carefully the record, the ancestry 
and the sympathies of every soldier, high and 
low. 

Our first night up at HoUebeke we were 
under a heavy bombardment which continued 
through the next day. Our casualties were 

150 



HOLLEBEKE 

quite heavy. It was clear that the attack 
might come off at any minute, and all hands 
had to stand to all the time. We had to keep 
a sharp lookout all the time for gas, too, and 
the officers were watching the wind every 
moment. In preparation for the attack an 
ej^tra large number of machine guns had been 
brought up and were emplaced both on the 
parapets of the front trench and in the sup- 
ports. The artillery to the rear had the range 
marked down and were ready for the signal to 
begin to pepper Fritz when he started to come 
over. 

We felt sure enough that we could stop him, 
but the waiting, humped up on the fire-step 
under the parapet, was wearing. Along about 
half-past four the bombardment increased to 
a terrible fury and held so for half an hour; 
then the shells began dropping to the rear and 
in the supports and we saw the Germans 
coming over. 

It really was a magnificent sight. They 

151 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

were Bavarians, big, husky, heavy-set lads, 
and they came in mass formation, four deep. 
Our rockets went up and before they were 
well on their way we were dropping shells 
into them and over them. They came forward 
in a great gray wave at a double, heads down, 
rifles at the hip. 

We cut loose with a hellish machine gun 
fire and every man was on the fire-step, going 
through the "mad minute" — that is, a rapid 
fire of all the cartridges your rifle will hold; 
and some of the men were so excited that 
they jumped up on the parapet yelling, 

"Come on, you bHghters, come on!" 

They came. We had no wire up and it 
looked as though they might come right on 
through. But the shell-fire got them early. 
Great gaps opened up in the close-packed 
fine. These filled and they came on again. 
The machines ripped into them and laid out 
windrows of dead. 

Our officers walked up and down the crowded 

152 



hollebeke 

trench — we had every available man on the 
fire-step — calling, 

"Stick to it, boys! Hold 'em and give 'em 
hell." 

I think that as the Fritzies came nearer we 
almost wished that some of them would get 
to us. The strain of waiting and watching 
that advance was so great that a fight hand 
to hand would be a relief. Very few got to us. 
Their lines were so broken when they were 
nearly up to us that the greater part of those 
still on their feet either turned and ran or 
dropped into shell-holes. 

The few that did reach us were smothered 
as soon as they dropped into the trench. The 
men jumped on them like terriers on a rat and 
hacked them to pieces. The only damage 
they did was with the few bombs they managed 
to lob over just before they got to us. 

When the attack was over the ground out 
in front was strewn thick with the dead and 
wounded From then up to dark we amused 

153 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

ourselves picking off anything that moved. 
Our own casualties for the day were eighty-six. 

During the next -Bve days we had to stop 
six of these attacks. Twice they got into 
our trench and there was some brisk hand- 
to-hand fighting. Personally I was fortunate 
enough to avoid this. I hated the bayonet 
then as always, and had no relish whatever for 
mixing it with a big Bavarian weighing two 
or three hundred pounds. . 

On the whole we held them better than we 
had any right to expect during those five days; 
for they did sure hammer us with big shells 
night and day. When we were not standing to, 
waiting for an attack, we were repairing the 
bashed-in parapets and cleaning out the 
traverses. There was no rest. The rations 
could n't be got up with any regularity. Casual- 
ties were heavy every day. They were wearing 
us out. 

But we held on until the artillery went 
back on us. On the last night, about eight 

154 



HOLLEBEKE 

o'clock, they came over again. It was very 
misty and nearly dark, anyway. We could 
just see them as they surged up out of the 
murk of fog. We sent up our rockets for the 
artillery fire, but none came; and the Huns 
came plunging across, unhindered except by 
our machine gun and rifle fire. 

They did n't seem to mind that, and they 
came with a cheer, a hoarse, guttural, all- 
together "Hoch!" or whatever the word was, 
that sounded like the Hons in the Zoo at feeding 
time. It must have been plain to our officers 
that we were not able to hold that trench 
against that charge. In any event we did 
something that the British seldom do. 

While the Germans were still halfway across 
No Man's Land, the order came to fall back 
into the support trenches. A few picked men 
who had had their emergency orders before 
stayed to cover the retreat, and showered the 
Germans with hand-grenades as they came 
up. In five minutes it was all over. 

155 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

Back in the supports we got the machine- 
guns set up in the communication trenches and 
rested snug. We had fallen back a hundred 
yards. The Huns had what they had been 
trying for, for nearly a week. And they were 
satisfied and happy. All that night we could hear 
them cheering and singing; but they were n't 
ready to make the attempt to come any farther. 

When we fell back I had found a good-sized 
shelter, and as I was off sentry-go I crawled 
into it and slept. Along about four I crawled 
out and it was raining hard — a cold, wet 
rain that soaked right through. An officer 
came up a few minutes later with a corporal 
and the rum ration. 

"Boys," he said, "we are going to be re- 
lieved tonight." 

A glad growl went around. 

"But," he said, "before we go to the rear 
we are going over and take that trench back. 
We start at five. The artillery will open at 
zero minus five. Pass the order." 

156 



HOLLEBEKE 

Well, there was another growl not so glad; 
but it sort of trailed off into an interested 
cheer, not very loud, but sincere. We hated 
the first thought of going back to the attack; 
but we hated worse to have the relief come 
up and find that we had been imable to 
hold. 

We had a triple rum issue all around and 
at five sharp we went over and up the com- 
munication trenches. The Huns stayed and 
fought weU for a few moments ; but our shelling 
had been well directed and effective. When 
we attacked, our guns threw a barrage across 
behind the Germans about forty yards out in 
No Man's Land. They had to stop and fight, 
whether they wanted to or not. 

For a few minutes after we piled into the 
trench, it was a regular Donnybrook Fair. 
There was no room to use a bayonet. At one 
point Germans and British were packed in 
so close that they were biting each other. I 
happened to be behind a tall fellow named 

157 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

Blake. My head came about up to his middle 
and he made a nice defense for me. I remember 
sticking my rifle between his legs and prodding 
at a pair of high boots that looked German. 
Then I fell down and someone trod on me and 
pushed my face in the mud. I thought I 
was in for slow death by smothering but I got 
free after a bit, and when I came up for air it 
was all over. 

The German resistance had been keen for 
a little while, but it had stopped very suddenly. 
We took a lot of prisoners; but our own casual- 
ties were heavy. The batt lost, as nearly as 
I can remember, about thirty per cent of its 
effectiveness in those six days. The Germans 
must have lost four times as many as we did. 
And when it was all done we were right back 
where we had started from. Neither side had 
gained an inch. 

As we went out that night after the relief 
had come up I couldn't help thinking how 
foolish and useless and expensive it all was. 

158 



HOLLEBEKE 

Going out I heard a fellow named Scribner 
grousing to his pal. He said a whole lot. 

"Wot's th' bloody use?" says Scrib. "We 
comes up an' we gits killed and we falls back, 
and we comes up and gits killed some more, 
and 'ere we are in th' same old plyce wif nothin' 
done. Wot's th' blinkin' use?" 



^59 



CHAPTER XIV 
Rest 

I SUPPOSE that the thing that the soldier in 
active service over there looks forward to most 
and relishes most when he gets it, is rest, — 
REST, spelled all in capitals. The reason 
Tommy likes rest so well is that he never gets 
any. As a rule, when they move you out of the 
trenches and send you back for a spell of re- 
cuperation they find a few light chores to do 
in the way of making roads or breaking stone 
or lugging ammo. When you are in the front 
line there isn't much to do but wait to get 
killed and wish you were in the rear. At the 
rear you think you 'd rather die quick than 
work yourself to death. There's no real rest 
in either place. 

Once in a trench-rat's age, though, some- 
body somewhere gets careless or gets the orders 

1 60 



REST 

balled up, and a batt is pulled out and put on 
its own for a week or two. 

That happened to my batt along toward the 
end of last July. We had had nearly fourteen 
months in the Flanders mud — some of it in 
the French mud, which tasted just the same 
and stuck just as close — and there was tumul- 
tuous cheering when the word went around 
that we were going back to a place called St. 
Omar for six whole weeks. Nobody believed 
it, but we were glad just the same. And it 
came true. 

This St. Omar burg must have been named 
after this Omar Khayyam chap that wrote the 
dinky Httle four-line verses about wine, women 
and song. Anyhow, it was that kind of a place. 

Our billets were at a suburb called St. 
Martin, about fifteen minutes' walk to the 
town. We were almost entirely on our own, 
having only two hours' parade in the morning, 
and then being free until 9 p. m. 

St. Omar had been a town of perhaps 20,000 

161 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

people in peace times, and was 30,000 now, 
with soldiers and war workers of various kinds. 
It had a pretty park in the middle of the town 
with the Hotel de Ville and the Cathedral on 
two sides, and any ninnber of cafes, estaminets, 
theatres and movie houses. Everything was 
wide — wide open up to eight o'clock. After 
that everythuig was shut up tighter than 
Boston at three iq the morning. During the 
open hours the maia idea of St. Omar seemed 
to be to entertain soldiers. The military au- 
thorities approved, and even tried to get an 
order from the French, keeping the cafes open 
until nine o'clock. We were given unlimited 
money — within reason — and were allowed to 
draw three months in advance. They showed 
us the town and told us to fly to it. We flew. 

I don't mean by this that we indulged in any 
wild orgies. There was nothing in the world to 
prevent a man from getting as drunk as a lord 
if he wanted to, or to plunge into the wildest 
dissipation. But it did n't work out that way. 

162 



REST 

This is as good a time as any to say some- 
thing about the much-advertised vice and 
corruption that the soldier is saturated with — 
according to some well-meaning but badly in- 
formed investigators. The red light district 
of St. Omar was wide open and free to the 
soldiers of all the nations. There was noth- 
ing in the world to keep the soldiers out of 
the houses of prostitution, and yet the num- 
ber of men in uniform who went into the 
restricted districts was smaller than anyone 
would suppose. 

This was due to the admirably organized 
French supervision. The women of the town 
were kept in their own places and were for- 
bidden to solicit. If a soldier went into the 
district he did it in cold blood and usually with 
a sober head on his shoulders. 

I have heard since I returned to the United 
States a good deal of irresponsible talk of the 
prevalence of disease in the armies. In all 
my experience of nearly two years at the actual 

163 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

front, going in and out of French towns with 
large bodies of men, I have known of very few 
cases of carelessly contracted disease. I would 
venture to say that the diseases of promiscuity 
are less prevalent in the British Army at the 
front than in civilian life. Soldiers are n't any 
little tin angels, but they are taught to be 
clean; discipline reaches them in their conduct 
while on their own, and as a rule they are tem- 
perate, either through inclination or because 
they have to be. In either case the result is 
the same. They are in no danger of falling 
into any wild degeneracy. 

St. Omar didn't really have much that we 
did n't get close up behind the front. Up there 
we had our beer in the canteens, and vaude- 
ville at the Divisional FolHes, and games and 
movies and music at the Y. M. C. A. The 
grub, too, was as good as it was in town. 

The difference was this: Bacon and eggs 
tasted better if you could sit down to a table 
and eat with a knife and fork, and did n't have 

164 



REST 

to clean up the dishes afterwards. It was 
luxury to come out of a movie show and sprawl 
around on a bench in the park with no place to 
go and nothing to do but watch the people go 
by; or to sit at one of the little iron tables at a 
sidewalk cafe and sop up citron and soda and 
just loaf. 

REST. That was it. The only thing lack- 
ing was a chance to sleep in a bed. After you 
get out of the trenches there's nothing quite 
like getting between clean sheets and stretch- 
ing out and wiggling your toes. It's almost 
worth being sent to the hospital for. Well, we 
did n't get any beds at St. Omar. We kipped 
on stone floors. But we sure did loaf to the 
last limit. 

Of course this could n't last the promised six 
weeks. No such luck. At the end of a fort- 
night ,we had orders to pack up and hike. It 
was back to Belgium — worse luck. We never 
wanted to see Belgium again, and wished it 
had never been on the map. The grousing over 

165 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

that move back into Flanders was near mutiny; 
but it did n't do us any good. 

We marched five miles, took a train, marched 
some more and fetched up outside Ypres, where 
we spent the night. Next morning the. officers 
came around and spilled the bad news. We 
were to go in reserve at Swan Chateau, behind 
a Scottish division which was to go over the 
top at Passchendaele. If they were success- 
ful we were to go back to St. Omar. If not, we 
were to take their places and carry on. 



i66 



I 




CHAPTER XV 
Back to the Front 

We left for Swan Chateau about nine that 
night, and after about an hour on the road ran 
smack into a new form of strafing — an air 
raid! I don't know whether it was because it 
was new to me or what, but it certainly got 
me windy. It was dark, and before we knew 
it there was a flock of planes right down on top 
of us. We could n't see them, but they were 
so low that we could hear the engines humming 
like bees, and the anti-aircraft guns began to 
go off. We had just passed a number of am- 
munition dumps, and we knew that was what 
they were after. Also we knew that if they 
hit the ammo we would go with it. 

Led by the officers we left the road and beat 
it across the open fields. Then the first bomb 
landed a couple of hundred yards back toward 

167 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the dumps. It must have lifted out a chunk 
^ of Flanders as big as a freight car, because 
mud and stones showered down aroimd us. 
I had seen one of these bombs, imexploded, in 
another place, and did n't want any dropping 
near me. They are pear-shaped, with an iron 
tail like the feather of an arrow, to make them 
fall straight, and they weigh sixty to seventy 
pounds. 

We scattered across the open, running at 
top speed — away from the ammo dumps. 
A minute later another bomb went off on the 
road which we had just left. I happened to 
be looking over my shoulder and saw it go 
up with a great red flare and a ground-shaking 
"boom." 

Then they commenced dropping all over the 
shop. The noise was terrifying. The anti- 
aircraft guns were barking — yap, yap, yap, 
yap, yap, BOOM — that would be a bomb — 
yap, yap, BOOM — and over it all the vicious 
heavy hum of the low-flying planes. It may 

i68 



BACK TO THE FRONT 

be because it was new, but everybody had 
the sensation that each bomb was hunting for 
him individually. 

When the rumpus was over — it lasted 
maybe ten minutes — the batt was scattered 
all over the landscape. It took two hours for 
the officers to round us up and get on. 

We made the Chateau about three in the 
morning. Our quarters here were good. The 
dugouts — if you would call them that — 
were above ground, built out of corrugated 
iron against old ruins, and sandbagged on top. 
We were there four days with nothing to do. 
It wasn't safe to go about much, as a few 
shells dropped near every day. There was a 
lot of our heavy artillery there, and we used to 
lie in the sun watching the big boys send 
over their messages, but mostly we stuck to 
the dugouts. 

On the fifth day news came back that the 
Scotch attack had been a washout, and that 
we were to go up that night and take over in 

169 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

a new sector in front of Westhoek near the 
foot of Passchendaele Ridge; two days later 
we were to go over the top and take the ob- 
jective where others had failed. 

We spent the days putting all our unneces- 
sary stuff in our packs, which were to be left 
behind. I had a lot of souvenirs, some of 
them things I had been packing around for a 
year, and I little thought that I should never 
see them again. 

We sent an officer and two men ahead in 
the morning to pick the best way to Railway 
Wood, but they never returned, as all three 
were killed by a shell. We started out at nine 
in the evening, without knowing exactly where 
we were going. 

Going up the road we could see shells burst- 
ing ahead of us in large numbers, but we hurried, 
because we wanted it over. And we walked 
right into it. I was plugging along with six 
other men, one a mate of mine named Higgins, 
who had been my pal for nearly two years, 

170 



BACK TO THE FRONT 

and another chap named Bott, that I thought 
a good deal of — both of whom I have aheady 
spoken of — and four stretcher-bearers that I 
did n't know by name. A shell burst right in 
the middle of us. I was thrown down and 
rolled into the ditch and half knocked out. 

Just as I was getting up — shellproof still, 
for I was n't marked and not badly shaken — 
another smashed in the same place. I saw 
two of the stretcher-bearers who were just 
getting to their feet go down, and I lay low a 
while longer. Then I got out and looked. 
Poor old Hig had gone west, smashed to bits. 
Bott had an arm off and both legs smashed and 
looked to be dead. The four stretcher-bearers 
were all dead. Strangely enough, I after- 
wards ran across Bott in England. He still 
had the arm and one leg missing, but he was 
otherwise able-bodied. So you see a man 
takes a lot of killing. 

Well, after I had counted what I supposed 
were the dead I lit out across lots towards 

171 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

where I could see some old tree stumps. I 
wanted cover and wanted it bad. I was going 
at top speed when I went into an old trench. 
I turned upside down, spun like a pinwheel, hit 
the water head first and started to try to swim. 
I got my feet imder after a bit, and my head 
was still a yard or so from the top and water 
up to my armpits. So I knew it was an old 
German trench. No Britisher would ever dig 
so deep. I fished up the rifle and tried to 
climb out. 

No go! Too slippery. So I started to 
floimder along the trench. I had only gone a 
little way when I ran into a man who covered 
me with an automatic and called to me to 
halt. I did. It was my company platoon 
officer. He didn't say how he came there, 
but I suppose the same way I did. We got 
out of the trench and found what was left of 
the company. The shells were flying over by 
now, and we plodded along without further 
trouble imtil we found our place in the line. 

172 



BACK TO THE FRONT 

That front line! It was a throwback to the 
old days at "Wipers/' when the Canadians 
were living like muskrats, or even to the days 
of 19 1 6 at Funky Village, when our own batt 
was wishing that they were mud turtles. 
However, there was no kick coming, because 
there was an excuse for it this time. 

During 19 17 the British had been pounding 
on pretty fast and there had n't been much 
chance to dig in; but nobody cared. We were 
on the way to Berlin. 

The Boche had discarded trenches in this 
part of the line, too, but he only did it because 
he had something better — the pill-boxes. I '11 
tell about them in just a minute. 

Our line was a narrow trench about four feet 
deep and two wide, with only a thin parapet of 
sandbags and no communication trenches. 
We tumbled in and wedged ourselves down 
into the bottom of this crack in the earth. 
We were some surprised when we were told 
that we were not to occupy this trench, but 

173 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

were to move out into some shell-holes a few 
yards in front. 

It was still dark when we took over the 
holes. From four to eight men were assigned 
to a hole. Our orders were about like this: 
"There is a hole out there with four men in 
it. Ten yards out. Take your rations and run 
for it at the word. All ready now. Carry on." 

Carry on we did. The hole I drew had the 
prescribed four men in it, and they left without 
waiting to argue the toss or even for a lull in 
the machine gun fire, which was awful. The 
bullets were cracking and squealing overhead 
in a torrent that let up for a few seconds now 
and then, but on the whole might be called 
continuous. We had ducked across in one of 
the quiet spells. When day broke it was easy 
to see why the men we had relieved had been 
in such a hurry. 

Those holes were absolutely the most pestifer- 
our spots that I ever saw. The new pill-boxes 
were established in a row at a point about 

174 



BACK TO THE FRONT 

three hundred yards away, and were raking 
us. In the daytime if you stuck a finger up 
they would take the top off. I lay in my first 
shell-hole two days and saw only the gray, 
wet sky overhead, and once during a short 
lull in the fire I peeped and had a glimpse of 
a torn and tortured terrain of mud, with here 
and there black stumps, and over there in the 
mist the low yellow wafers that we knew were 
the pill-boxes. 

The smell in these holes was dreadful. There 
were himdreds of bodies all about, lying im- 
buried in the muggy August warmth. Blue- 
bottle flies by the million settled over every- 
thing and bit like Jersey mosquitoes. 

When we went into the holes we took with 
us rations for two days. Each man had two 
rashers of bacon, about two poimds of cold 
roast beef and a half loaf of bread. For each 
four men there was a tin of jam, a tin of con- 
densed milk, two cans of baked beans, plenty of 
tea and sugar, and a Tommy's cooker. We 

175 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

had our water-bottles filled and took along a 
petrol can with two gallons of water. The 
cooker was a spirit-lamp affair for making tea 
and frying bacon. 

We had no overcoats, and while the days 
were warm and sticky and sickening, the 
nights got awfully cold. Two days were as 
much as any man could stand in these places. 
Lying there all day looking up at a gray sky 
and breathing the foul air, soaking in the 
filthy mud and imable to move about at all, 
was enough to put the huskiest Tommy nearly 
out of business. 

When we were relieved, at the end of two 
days, and went back into the support trenches, 
about ninety per cent of the men had tempera- 
tures of over a hundred and were out and 
out sick. Scores wanted to report sick, but the 
M. 0. was at Railway Wood, and it would 
have been impossible to get back there, so we 
had to stick it out and go into the holes again 

a day later. 

176 



BACK TO THE FRONT 

We were to go over the top on the morning 
of August 21, and we did, four battaUons of 
men, more than haK of whom were fit subjects 
for the hospital. 



177 



CHAPTER XVI 

Taking the Pill-Boxes 

This was not a big battle. There were, as I 
have said, only four battalions engaged on 
our side. The affair was more or less of an 
experiment. The pill-boxes were a new Ger- 
man defensive and had never been thoroughly 
tried out. We were the goats. The Httle forts 
were to be given a chance to rake us and see 
how we stood it. 

It had been proved pretty clearly already that 
the boxes were the most effective defence ever 
devised. They were simply fortified shell-holes. 

Now, for some strange reason, shells rarely 
strike twice in the same place. We had found 
that out when we were lying in the holes. 
Shells would burst all about us, but only once 
in a hundred times would there be a direct hit 
over an old hole. 

178 



TAKING THE PILL-BOXES 

It follows that if you fortify an old hole so 
that it takes two or more hits to dislodge the 
machine gun that you have placed there, why, 
your machine is going to be in commission and 
dangerous even under an extraordinary heavy 
and well-directed shell-fire, and is going to be a 
hard thing to take. 

Well, on this attack, our orders were very 
simple. They were to go over and take those 
pill-boxes. That was all. The boxes were in a 
row about three hundred yards away. They 
were in groups of ^ve, about ten or fifteen 
yards apart, and then a gap of perhaps fifty 
yards with a section of sap or trench. 

Our artiUery commenced slamming them the 
night before and kept it up hard and fast up to 
7 130 in the morning, when we were to go over. 
About seven I took a look through the peri- 
scope and studied the terrain out in front. It 
was level and muddy and pitted with shell- 
holes, and away off there the white steeples of 
Passchendaele showed dim against the haze. To 

179 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

the rear and to the left and nearer, the jagged, 
black ruins of "Wipers" broke the skyline. 

In the foreground the low boxes were spit- 
ting fire regularly, unharmed after a night of 
it. Shells burst all around them, tossing off 
lumpy clouds of gray smoke with daubs of red 
flame in the middle, and up above airplanes 
circled ready to chase the Boche fliers if they 
should come out to take a hand. 

This was our first go at the pill-boxes, and in 
our sick and discouraged condition we fuUy 
expected a washout. The four of us, in our 
hole, had no officer with us, but we arranged 
our tactics ourselves. Two of us were to bomb 
the box through the gun slots. And two — I was 
one of these — were to go around to the rear, 
where we assumed there would be a door, and 
prod the outcoming Boche in his tenderest parts. 

The fact is we did n't any of us expect to 
get halfway across. About five minutes before 
zero — starting time — our artillery laid down 
a smoke barrage in front of us. When we went 

i8o 



TAKING THE PILL-BOXES 

over we couldn't see the boxes and they 
could n't see us. It worked beautifully. They 
raked the groxrnd with the machine guns, but 
they were shooting in the dark. The mud 
was kicked up all around us for a himdred and 
fifty yards, but nobody was hit. We advanced 
slowly behind the barrage. Halfway across, 
Jackson, one of the bombers, copped his, a 
piece of sheU that took his head nearly off, and 
he pitched forward beside me, face down. 
We did n't stop. 

Then the barrage raised and we found that 
we were right on top of the boxes. I saw Green 
throw a bomb, but it did n't go in the gun 
slots, and boimced off. The third man and I 
dropped on our beUies to get under the gun 
fire and crawled forward rapidly. Green threw 
a couple more bombs which went over. By 
this time I was right under the box and I 
pulled the pin out of a bomb with my teeth 
and reached up and dropped it in. It seemed 
to be the only way and it did for the Boches 

i8i 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

inside. We ran aroiuid to the rear and there 
was a great groaning and yelling inside for a 
few seconds. When we crawled in the door 
there was one dead German and two badly 
wounded. The two wounded died imme- 
diately. 

Now about the construction of the pill- 
boxes. They were made of standardized con- 
crete blocks of keystone shape, that is, wide at 
one end and narrow at the other. These 
blocks were grouted together with a rich ce- 
ment mixture and the walls were about thirty- 
six inches thick. The structure went down 
under the groxmd about five feet and stuck up 
about two feet. They had three window slots 
about four inches across, that is, up and down, 
and ten inches long. These were on three 
segments of the front, and behind each slot 
was a machine gim on a tripod. The top was 
flat reinforced concrete. There was a little 
door in the rear and a communication trench 
rimning right up to it. 

182 



TAKING THE PILL-BOXES 

Experience showed later that it took two or 
three direct hits from good-sized shells to put 
one of these contraptions out of business. And, 
as I have said, it takes uncommonly good gun- 
ning to lay two shells down in one place, much 
less three, so they were effective against any- 
thing but main strength and awkwardness, a 
charge with the bayonet and the bombs. We 
had been unexpectedly successful in taking 
these first ones. Later, I understand, when the 
Germans got the knack of ranging their ma- 
chine guns through the slots the slaughter in 
taking the piU-boxes was terrible. 

One advantage they had over trenches — 
and it was a great one — was that the boxes 
could not be turned around after they were 
taken. In preparing a pill-box for a counter 
attack the only thing to do was to sandbag the 
back door, which left only one fire-opening 
over the top of the sandbags. 

We held the positions we had taken until ten 
that night, when we were reHeved. During the 

183 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

day we had a good chance to examine the pill- 
boxes, and we made some startling discoveries. 

There were two or three cement-mixers 
aroimd the place and a considerable number of 
cement bags. These cement bags all bore the 
marks of an English firm. A German officer 
who was taken farther down the line in the 
attack made the statement that the cement 
which was used in the pill-boxes had been in 
England less than three weeks previous to the 
day we captured them. 

An investigation was started in England im- 
mediately. I heard later that this inquiry was 
in progress in London not later than August 
25. It was proved that large shipments of 
cement had been sent to Holland with the 
alleged understanding that the material was to 
be used in repairing the dykes. 

The Dutch consignees admitted that the 
material had been sent into Belgium for the 
German Army. Moreover, it was common 
gossip that the firms shipping the cement 

184 



TAKING THE PILL-BOXES 

either knew that the cement was destined for 
the German Army or were in a position to know 
that it might and probably would be. The in- 
vestigation made it perfectly clear that there 
were British firms who were so mad for war 
profits that they were willing to furnish the 
materials for death devices which would cer- 
tainly be used for the slaughter of English 
soldiers. This cement deal opened up phases 
of profiteering that were appalling. Apparently 
there are people in any country who will sell 
their souls for a profit. 

The amazing part of this transaction — to 
me — was what happened later. Along in 
October I was in England, having been gassed 
and sent to Blighty to get well. I was con- 
valescent and v/as wandering around London 
seeing the sights. One day I was leaning over 
a bridge across the Thames watching three 
ships loading with cement. Naturally the 
thought of the pill-boxes popped into my head. 
I called down to a sailor who was loafing on 

^^5 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

deck and asked him where he was bound. 
Holland! Two months after the expose of the 
pill-boxes England was still shipping the 
material to Holland for the destruction of her 
own soldiers! Oh, well! What's a Tommy 
more or less? 

As for me, I'm heartily glad that I never 
had occasion to go against the pill-boxes again. 
Relieved that night, we had no casualties going 
back. The Boche was seemingly discouraged 
and on his good behavior. 

We reached Railway Wood at eleven o'clock, 
had hot tea and three spoonfuls of rum, dropped 
on the ground in the dugouts, and in five 
minutes every man was snoring. 

I was so tired that I would have slept even 
if I had known what was coming to me a week 
later, when I was properly gassed. 



i86 



CHAPTER XVII 

Gassed 

After our stunt in cleaning out the pill-boxes 
we were due for two days' rest at Railway 
Wood. For a wonder we got it. Must have 
been a mistake somewhere. The dugouts there 
were good and dry and safe, being in a tunnel 
under the embankment of the Ypres-Roulers 
railroad, and were big enough to hold thirty 
men each. They were connected by passages 
to keep the men from going outside, as this 
section was being shelled all the time. So all 
we had to do was eat and sleep and play cards 
and write letters by candle-light. I had re- 
ceived a Boston paper a day or two before, and 
read the thing through and back again and in- 
side out, down to the ads and the death notices. 
So did everybody else. Tommy is quite as in- 
terested in American newspapers as in his own. 

187 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

He thinks we are a bit queer, but he likes to 
read about us. 

Rations at Railway Wood were still cold and 
we had to do our own cooking, the same as in 
the shell-holes. I got to be an expert at boiling 
water. The forty-eight hours' rest passed be- 
fore we knew it, and at ten on the night of 
August 24 we went up to the line again. It 
was quiet this time, with only an occasional 
shell coming over, and we made it without 
casualties. 

We expected to occupy the pill-boxes we had 
taken, but found that the company that had 
relieved us had fallen back to shell-holes about 
fifty yards from the boxes. So we rolled into 
the mud again and settled down for another 
two days of the horrors. The place smelled 
worse than before. 

The hole I drew was too small, and there 
were four of us in it. We got busy that night 
and dug some little saps so we could sit down 
and stretch without lying on top of each other. 

188 



GASSED 

About -Give the next morning Fritz started his 
regular daybreak strafing and we were glad of 
the saps. 

The next hole to ours was bashed in and a 
chap named Lawton had his shoulder ripped 
away. He lived through it and was carried out 
that night. 

During the day the wind was just right and 
six times Fritz sent over gas waves. He gave 
them to us every two hours on the tick. We had 
the respirators on most of the time. The Boche 
was playing a game. He knew that we were in 
a place where it would be impossible to get up 
new helmets, and that the chemicals in any 
gas mask will last only so long. No doubt he 
drenched us with mustard gas that day in 
the hope that by night many of us would be 
wearing played-out respirators and would be 
easy victims. It worked. He bagged quite a 
number. 

That night orders came up for a patrol of 
twelve men to be sent out to have a "look-see" 

189 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

in front of the German lines. When we had 
taken the pill-boxes the Boche had fallen back 
to ordinary trenches several hundred yards 
away. He had wires in front, and we wanted to 
get some line on whether he was preparing for a 
counter-attack on the boxes. So we were told 
to go out without rifles and armed only with 
four bombs apiece and a persuader. 

A persuader is a club with a loaded and nail- 
studded head. You side-wipe a Boche under 
the chops with it and it crushes his nob like an 
egg-shell. We did not blacken our faces as 
usual, as it was very dark. We were to spy out 
the German positions and take prisoners if we 
could do it without making a noise. 

We left at ten o'clock. We were really each 
man on his own. Shells were falling here and 
there, and for half an hour we lay in holes. We 
wanted all the cover we could get. Then we 
went forward. 

I had been out maybe an hour and was a hun- 
dred yards or so in front of the pill-boxes when 

190 



GASSED 

I got a sniff of gas. They were giving it to us 
again after a day of it. I hurried into the res- 
pirator. Soon I got a Httle dizzy. I knew what 
was wrong. The chemical in my mask was worn 
out. I was getting gassed and knew it was time 
to light out for home. I headed back and my 
brain began to spin. Immediately all sense of 
direction went out of me. I fell over one body 
and on top of another. I clawed him over, hunt- 
ing for his gas mask. There was n't any. The 
mask on the next body was slit, and that on 
another man had the tube broken. I gave it 
up and staggered away, with no idea of where 
I was going. Presently I fell into some wire 
and hung there. The barbs clutched and clung 
at my puttees and trousers. I found myself 
too weak to get out and slid down into a crouch, 
hopeless and waiting to die. My breath became 
terribly labored. I fought for each inhalation, 
dragging it up in great, rasping, gurgling gasps. 
My eyes stung terribly, and the tears streamed 
down my face and went salty into my mouth. 

191 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

I slobbered. I got the taste of mustard in my 
nose and in the back of my throat, and my 
palate stung and swelled. 

I weakened rapidly. But finally I summoned 
the strength to drag off my helmet for air. No 
use. It was worse in the open. I sickened and 
tried to vomit, but could n't, retching and heav- 
ing imtil I hung limp in the wire with my face 
crushed down in the cruel barbs. 

I did n't lose consciousness and was still fight- 
ing for air when I heard a man say: 

"Don't move, damn you. Who are you?" 

I pulled together all the Hfe that was left in 
me and muttered in a voice that sounded 
strangely loud and that made my eardrums 
ache: 

"British soldier.'* 

Then I slid put of the world. 

I came back to it as they were dragging me 
out of the wires and heard them say that they 
were from the Somersets and were out on patrol, 
and that I was in German wire. 

192 



GASSED 

" Lucky devil, ' ' I heard someone say. " He 'd 
a' copped it in another hour when it got light." 

"Lucky?" says another chap. "I'd say 'd 
done better to go west wif a souvenir in 'is 

napper. It'U be 'ell for 'im wif all that gas 

• J* J) 
in im. 

It was. During the next few days I agreed 
with the second fellow and wished that I had 
copped a bullet instead of the gas. 

I fainted again. When I came out of that one 
I was at a first-aid station and someone was 
forcing a bitter drink through my teeth. I was 
fighting for every breath. Two stretcher- 
bearers loaded me on a stretcher and started 
down the road towards Ypres to the field dress- 
ing-station. This was the same road where we 
had been shelled coming up, and as daylight 
came on we caught it again. Two or three big 
ones hit right in the road ahead of us, and they 
lugged me over to an old trench, the same one 
where I had met my platoon officer in the night. 

While here I suffered so terribly that I wanted 

193 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

to die. I prayed for a shell to do me in. The 
strangling, drowning sensation and the racking 
effort for every burning lungful of oxygen was 
simply tearing me to pieces. I tried to stop 
breathing, but nature fought against my will, 
and I kept on the painful gasping. 

My eyes were burning and the water was 
running from them and my nose. I begged 
the bearers to take me down to the dressing- 
station, and the brave fellows finally lifted me 
out and started down the road, disregarding 
shell-fire. 

When they landed me at the dressing-station, 
a good safe place in the basement of an old 
building, they pumped me full of oxygen, and 
after that I was able to breathe. My linings 
still burned and smarted terribly, but with the 
oxygen feeding the lungs the struggle for breath 
was less hard. 

The M. O. tagged me: "Gassed. Serious. 
Lying." That meant I was a stretcher case. 
After an hour they took me out and loaded me 

194 



GASSED 

into an ambulance with three other stretcher 
cases. Sometime along in the forenoon we 
arrived at the C. C. S., outside of Popperringhe. 

The Casualty Clearing Station is where they 
sort out the woimded. A complete record is 
made of each case and the Red Cross nurses at 
these stations have it hard. There are, of 
course, a good many deaths and a lot of tough 
cases that cannot be moved for a considerable 
time. 

This station at Popperringhe had about a 
hundred big marquee tents and some huts. 
Thousands of casualties of all sorts went through 
every week, and all the wards were full, as a 
rule. This was my fourth time under the Red 
Cross flag and I had always felt safe there, but 
this first night at Popperringhe gave me a new 
experience that showed that there is no safety 
anywhere from the Hun. About 9 130, when I 
had become fairly comfortable with morphine 
and oxygen, and was almost able to doze off I 
heard the soft, punky "swish-pung" of the 

195 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

anti-aircraft guns and knew that there was a 
raid on. 

I remembered the bombing I had been under 
a few days before and was scared a-plenty. I 
was lying here helpless and they were no doubt 
getting ready to drop bombs on us. And yet it 
didn't seem possible. It wasn't human. A 
patient in the next cot called out to the nurse: 

"Is it an air raid, Sister?" 

And she very coolly answered: 

"It is. But don't get excited. They may 
not hit us." 

She hardly had the words out of her mouth 
when — "whang-bang," two heavy explosions, 
seemingly just outside the hut. The ground 
shook and the canvas sides of the hut bellied in 
with the shock. I was unable to get up and see 
the effects of the raid, but I heard all about it 
and a number of the wounded were brought 
into my hut. 

The Boche had deliberately bombed the sta- 
tion, and those two explosions had killed twenty- 

196 



GASSED 

six and wounded forty-five men. Of the twenty- 
six killed fourteen were Germans who were 
being treated by our Red Cross. 

This crime was deliberate and no mistake, as 
the C. C. S. had been on this spot for three years, 
and the Red Cross flag was flying on all sides 
and was painted on the top of every tent and 
hut. A wounded German officer said it was 
reprisal because the English had fired on a 
German Red Cross train a few days before. 
This was true. They had. But only after the 
observers had discovered that the Huns were 
using the train to bring up reserves. This 
reprisal illustrates, I think, the German view 
of fair play. Anything that is to their advan- 
tage is fair. Anything that is to their disadvan- 
tage is unfair. The will to win is so strong in 
the Hun that he loses all sense of, honor, fair 
play, decency, pity, reason, and everything 
else that goes to make up a human being. 
They are a nation gone mad. 

I was at the C. C. S. for nine days and had a 

197 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

hard time of it. I suffered with my lungs for 
four or five days and then got a little better, but 
the gas had nearly put my eyes out and all the 
mucous surfaces were raw — nose, mouth, and, 
the doctor said, 'way down inside me, lungs, 
stomach, and so on. I had to wear blue goggles 
and a shade and expected to go blind. 

At the end of nine days I was coming along 
pretty well and wanted to sit up. Judging from 
former experience I expected to be sent back 
into the line as soon as I got my feet under me, 
but the M. O. thought differently. He tagged 
me: "Phthisis and debility. Serious. Lying." 
And the next day I was carried on to a Red 
Cross train which came right into the camp. 
There were a thousand patients aboard. We 
did n't know where we were going, nor did the 
nurses. 

Every man had a package of fags and an 
orange, and the nurses made us all comfortable. 
After a slow ride of five hours we brought up 
at a place called Etaples. 

198 



GASSED 

There are a number of hospitals here, and I 
landed in the British Hospital No. — . The Red 
Cross people sure did make us comfortable at 
fitaples, as everywhere else. I got better very 
fast and was feeling so good that I was more 
than surprised one day when the M. 0. came 
around and said: 

"Mack, I am going to send you on a little 
trip." 

"What kind of a trip?" I asked. 

"Blighty," said he. 

Well, say, I nearly had shell-shock. I was 
glad enough to get Blighty, but was feeling so 
good that it did n't seem possible. However, I 
was worse than I thought, and the Doc knew it. 

I was now a walking patient, but the tag on 
my coat was the same. After another slow ride 
we hit Calais and were loaded on a hospital ship 
and got under way immediately. On the way 
across we were escorted by four torpedo boats — 
another precaution against the humane Hun, 
who loves to sink a thousand wounded as well as 

199 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

anything he knows about — and we all had to 
wear life belts. We crossed in two hours and 
spent the time cussing the Germans, eating one 
large, luxurious Red Cross dinner and looking 
for the coast of England. 

The docks were crowded. So was the station. 
So were the streets. It is one of the things that 
the English seem never to lose enthusiasm over 
— greeting the wounded when they come back. 
It is one of the things the Germans can't under- 
stand. I have been told by people returning 
from Germany that the wounded are kept away 
from Berlin and the larger centres of population 
because the sight of many casualties would dis- 
courage the folks at home. It works the other 
way with the British. When they read their 
casualty lists or see their crippled men coming 
back they get mad clean through. The sight 
strikes no fear into their hearts. Every wounded 
man they see puts a new determination into 
their souls, and they are just so much more eager 
to go out and win. The Englishman may be 

200 



GASSED 

stupid and slow. But the harder you lick him 
the stronger he comes back. He never knows 
when he is beaten. As a New Orleans doctor 
who took care of me at Chatham said: 

"He's the fightingest fool in the world." 

The mob at Dover was roped off so they 
could n't get at us; but how they did cheer I It 
made me glad that I had been over and done 
my bit. I had been away for seventeen months 
and had been through hell and repeat, and 
had n't expected to see Blighty again. It sure 
made the lump come up in the throat and the 
tears come into the eyes — that reception at 
Dover. 

Another short ride in a Red Cross train 
landed us in Canterbury. Another reception 
here. We were loaded into ambulances, and 
on the way to the hospital people rushed into 
the streets and threw flowers to us. The ambu- 
lance I was in, a "Tin Lizzie," broke down and 
I walked the last half mile to the hospital. 

I was in Canterbury for six days and had a 

20I 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

chance to visit the Cathedral, after which I was 
shifted to Chatham. I was beginning to get fed 
up on this moving around. There was the same 
red tape and formahty of registration at each 
new place. I imagine a weak patient would get 
all worn out. As it happened, this was my last 
move. 

At Chatham I fell into it cushy. When I 
went into the Medical Office I saw the M. 0. sit- 
ting back to me at a desk. He had on an Ameri- 
can service hat. I motioned to him and whis- 
pered to the sister: 

"Yankee?" 

She said yes, and I whispered: 

"I'm another." 

She fairly shouted: 

" Oh, Lieutenant Coleman, here 's a Yankee 1 " 

The lieutenant jumped up and grabbed me by 
the hand and nearly pumped my arm off. He 
had been there only ten days and I fancy he was 
lonesome. He quartered me in the best hut on 
the grounds in the flower garden near his office. 

202 



GASSED 

I had been there only two days when I had a re- 
lapse and was in bed for more than a week. 
Doctor Coleman used to come in and sit on my 
bed in his off hours and we would swap yams 
about God's country and talk about places we 
both knew in Boston and in New Orleans, where 
he came from. 

While at Chatham I had several automobile 
rides out in the country and was invited out to 
tea quite often. There were concerts in the 
auditorium twice a week, and Hfe for the con- 
valescents was pretty pleasant. For that matter 
the men in bed had a better time than they had 
ever expected to see again. It was almost worth 
while getting wounded. We got the best of 
everything in the way of fruit and tobacco and 
the nurses were very kind. 

Visitors did a good deal for us, too. Opinion 
was about equally divided among the Tommies 
as to whether visitor's day was a blessing or a 
nuisance. Most of the men hated to be put on 
exhibition and to have to answer questions. 

203 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

I myself thought it was a lot of fim. Some 
of the answers that a wounded soldier shoots 
back at an impertinent visitor are sharp and to 
the point. 

There was a little Cockney in the next bed to 
me who had had the end of his nose nipped off 
by a bullet. He had n't any too much to begin 
with, and he was sore about it. His face was 
all plastered up. Also he had an abdominal 
wound that kept him on his back. 

One day an old lady, one of those well-mean- 
ing, inquisitive, aristocratic dames, came in. 
She had a huge, high-bridged nose, one of those 
beaks that are so common among the British 
upper classes. She evidently liked to stick that 
nose into other people's business. Anyway she 
went up to Tommy and said: 

"My good man, where are you wounded?" 

Tommy thought that the plaster on his face 
was answer enough, and he grunted. 

"Come, my good fellow," says the old lady. 
"Tell me where your wound is." 

204 



GASSED 

Tommy looked up with contempt in his eye. 

"Lady," he says, "if the bullet 'it you where 
it 'it me there would n' be nothing left of you." 

Visitors always ask two questions, and we 
always try to have an answer ready for them. 

The first is: "Are you wounded?" which is 
a fool question to ask a man who is in bed in a 
hospital. The second is: "Did you ever kill a 
German?" That is a natural enough question. 
I have yet to meet a person that does n't ask it, 
but it gets tiresome. 

They told a story at Chatham about an Irish- 
man who was approached by a lady visitor with 
the customary question. She gushed, " Oh, my 
poor man, are you wounded?" 

"No, ma'am," said Pat. "I was kicked be a 
cootie." 

That did n't faze her a bit. 

Back she came with, "Did you ever kill a 
German?" 

Pat shook his head. 

" Shure lady," he said, " I don't know. But I 

205 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

kin tell ye this. Jist before I cops this crack on 
the nob, Micky Flinn says to me, says he, 
'Shake yer bay 'nit, Pat. Ye've a brace of 
Boches hangin' to it.''* 

She slammed the door on the outside. 

The sick soldier is up to as many tricks as a 
school boy, and he gets away with them because 
you can't punish him much. One that we used 
to put over on our good sisters was a fair crime. 
We ought to have been ashamed of it, but we 
were not. 

When the nurse was taking temperature at 
tea-time somebody would sneak his thermom- 
eter out, stick it in the hot tea and run up a 
beautiful temperature and then slip the glass 
back under the tongue just before the sister 
came back. 

Then she would fuss around the villain for 
an hour or so and usually he'd get chicken for 
supper. 

One of our medical officers was a tall, young 
Englishman with an eyeglass, one of those stage 

206 



GASSED 

Britishers that you don't often see in real 
life. 

One day he stuck the thermometer in the 
mouth of a young Welshman. It happened that 
the soldier was sucking on a piece of ice at the 
time, but he did n't say anything and rolled the 
glass aroimd where it would get good and cold. 

When the M. O. held the thermometer up to 
the light he let out a surprised gasp. 

"My word!" lie said. "My word, me good 
fellow ! If this bally glawss is right you ' ve been 
dead since the battle of the Mame." 

And yet they say that Englishmen have no 
sense of humor. To my mind it is what carries 
them through. It is what will carry them 
through. The Cockney private and the aristo- 
cratic officer each has the good sense to take his 
hardships lightly and to joke at danger. It helps 
make the Englishman hard to beat. 

As a comrade in arms the Englishman is good 
enough for me; and, while I was as ready as 
the next one to take my discharge after doing 

207 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

my bit in the war, I never in my life regretted 
anything more than having to leave the British 
service. 

A year before I had tried to get out. This 
time they put me out. Lieutenant Coleman 
looked over my record and said that he thought 
I had done enough for the Allied cause, regard- 
less of physical condition. Then he X-rayed me 
and said I had to go whether I wanted to or not. 
They gave me my discharge papers with pen- 
sion on the 26th of October, 19 17. 

Three days later I was in civilian clothes and 
a month later was in the U. S. A. Well, I have 
fooled them on the weak lungs. For some rea- 
son the air of Boston has agreed with the old 
bellows, and they have been getting stronger 
every week. 

If I get to feeling any better I am afraid I 
shall get that darned fool longing for the 
trenches and get into khaki again under the 
Stars and Stripes. 



208 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Shells and Slang 

One of the first things a newcomer to the 
British Army notices is the slang, or "Hngo," 
as it is called. It really almost amounts to a 
new language, especially to a Yank. A good 
part of it is in common use among the English 
lower classes, but it is Greek to an American. 

In writing this book I have tried as much 
as possible to avoid the use of trench vernacular 
that would not be understood by the reader, 
and for that reason I set down here some of 
the commoner expressions and their meanings. 

Tommy is particularly apt in his names of 
the different kinds of shells. A whiz-bang, 
for example, is just what its name implies. 
It goes off with that kind of a noise. The 
whiz-bang comes over without any noise what- 
ever; but just before it hits it goes "whizzzz" 

209 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

and then, of course, "BANG.'' A "pip- 
squeak'' makes that kind of noise coming over, 
with the same general kind of a bang at the 
end. "Crumps" are almost any kind of high 
explosive shell, and nearly all of them say 
"crump" when they land. A *' Minnie" or 
minnenwerfer is a German trench-mortar. It 
is about as big as a milk-can and comes over 
on a high arc, tumbling over and over like a 
football, and is plainly visible. It is not danger- 
ous — that is, the ^ying pieces of the case are 
not bad; but the minnie tears a huge hole in 
the ground or in the parapet of a trench, and 
it is imhealthy to be very near one when it 
explodes. The minnie talks to you when it 
comes. It starts saying very distinctly, "I'm 
coming for you, for you, for you, for you." 
At night it leaves a trail of sparks. Altogether 
the minnie is the poHtest of the German shells. 
One of the worst shells the Hun uses is the 
5.9, or the five-point-nine, better known as a 
"coal box." This emits a huge cloud of black 

210 



SHELLS AND SLANG 

smoke and makes more noise than any other 
shell. Almost any shell of any calibre can be 
heard whistling as it comes. For that matter 
they whistle as they go. We get so we can 
distinguish between those arriving and those 
going from our own guns. 

The "toffee apple" is an English trench 
mortar, a round ball with a piece of pipe 
attached. I don't know how it looks when it 
is arriving, having never been on the receiving 
end. Our "flying pig" is similar to the minnie, 
but weighs a hundred pounds and penetrates 
the ground very deeply before exploding. 

The Mills hand grenade is the latest and 
most ejBScient of the new bombs. Formerly, in 
the first stages of the war, the British grenades 
were a hand-made affair, fabricated out of a 
jam tin and some explosive, wired on to a 
stick. They looked like a hairbrush and were 
so called. The Mills is a lemon-shaped grenade 
weighing about two and a half poimds. Its 
case is cast iron, scored with deep creases so 

211 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

that it will break into about fifty pieces. It 
has a lever running from the top down one 
side. This is held in position by a pin with a 
key ring at one end. When the bomber is 
ready to throw the Mills he grasps the bomb, 
holding down the lever with his fingers, and 
pulls the pin either with his left hand or with 
his teeth. When the bomb leaves the hand 
the lever is thrown up by a spring and the 
bomb is exploded after four seconds by a 
mechanism released by the lever. 

The rifle grenade is about the size of the 
Mills but cylindrical and similarly creased. 
It has a rod which sticks into the muzzle of a 
rifle and is projected by a blank cartridge. 
It will carry more than a hundred yards. For 
some reason we found that the German rifle 
grenade was comparatively harmless. They 
used to make a point of lobbing them over at 
the latrines, which in some mysterious way they 
knew the locations of. It was embarrassing to 
be engaged in a shirt hunt and be driven out 

212 




Here are the Trophies — a German Bomb and a 
German Helmet 



SHELLS AND SLANG 

by grenades. It is the German idea of a 
joke. 

Machine guns are called by Tommy "type- 
writers." The German ones make a noise 
like the typewriters used in a newspaper office. 
The British machine guns are of two types 
mainly, the Lewis and the Vickers. The 
Lewis is light and is used from the front trench. 
The Vickers is a heavier rapid firer and is 
usually emplaced in the support trenches or 
somewhere to the rear. 

At close quarters Tommy uses a persuader 
or a knuckle knife to render the Fritz napoo- 
fini. A persuader is a short club with a studded 
head. A knuckle knife is a short dagger with 
a hilt that covers the hand serving for brass 
knucks. Napoo-fini means finished — dead — 
absent. When a Tommy is wounded he "cops 
one." The one may be a "Blighty" one, 
which is a wound that will take him to 
England — BHghty. The British rifle is usually 
termed by Tommy a "barndook." Nobody 

213 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

knows why. A bayonet is a "pin/' for obvious 
reasons. His helmet is a "tin hat," which he 
wears on his "napper." 

Flares or star-lights, commonly known as 
"Verys," are a greenish- white light sent up 
to illuminate No Man's Land. When one goes 
aloft anyone who is out there stands stock 
still, and can rarely be distinguished as a man 
unless he moves. 

Coming down to food, nearly everything 
has its new name. Bread is "pan." Bacon 
is "sow-belly," imless it is very lean, when it 
is "lance corporal bacon." Tea is called 
"char." A stew comes up under the name of 
"scow," and the dessert, which is infrequent, 
goes as "afters." The near hash of supper is 
called "rissoles." Bacon fat is "gippo." 

Tommy "kips" — that is, sleeps — in a 
dugout or runs to a funk-hole to avoid "click- 
ing it." You "click" or "go west" if you 
die. You also click a hard job or you may 
cHck a "souvenir," which is a bullet. After 

214 



SHELLS AND SLANG 

you die you are said to be "pushing up the 
daisies/' or you are "a landowner in France," 
or you have "the wooden cross/' 

If Tommy goes to the hospital he is cared 
for by a sister. All nurses are "sisters'' and 
all chaplains are "sky pilots" or "Holy Joes." 
A staff officer is a "red cap" and the medical 
officer is an M. O. 



215 



CHAPTER XIX 
Back to Blighty 

When a soldier is in training his main am- 
bition is to get over to France and to get into 
the trenches. After he has been over there 
twenty-four hours he thinks of nothing but 
getting back to BHghty. Aside from the fact 
that the trenches are the worst places in the 
world and anything is preferable, the passionate 
desire of the Englishman for England is based, 
I should think, on the very human trait of 
wanting the thing that is hard to get. 

It is sure hard to swing Blighty once you 
get across the Channel. A wound is the only 
thing that takes a man back and sometimes 
that doesn't. Theoretically when a man has 
served from eighteen months to three years 
he is entitled to ten days' leave if he can be 

216 



BACK TO BLIGHTY 

spared. Usually he can't be spared. And so 
Tommy spends the most of his time talking 
about Blighty and how badly he wishes he 
was there; and the pubs he will visit when 
he gets the leave that never comes; and the 
gels he will make love to; and the swagger 
grub he will eat, and all that sort of thing. I 
heard so much of it that I was almost as anxious 
to see London as a native. 

I had had only a day or two to look about 
before I enlisted and hadn't seen much. So 
when I was discharged from the hospital at 
Chatham in October, 19 17, and had eighteen 
days to wait for my discharge from the army, 
I took the first train for London to take in this 
much-talked-about heaven of the Tommy. 

I got me a room near Tottenham Court Road 
and started in to see the sights. London 
under a camouflage of October fog is not a 
city to impress the sightseer. I spent the 
days going about and seeing the things that a 
tourist thinks that he ought to see; and nights 

217 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

I did the theatres and music halls from one 
end of the big town to the other. 

After two weeks of watching the night life 
of London I gathered the impression that 
England as represented by its capital is suffer- 
ing terribly under the strain of the war. 

I found that the places of amusement were 
crowded every night. People were trying to 
forget; and in trying they drank too much, 
spent their money recklessly, and were as a 
whole dangerously near a breaking-point of 
hysteria. Women smoked cigarettes publicly 
and continuously. Men back from the front 
plimged into dissipation in their brief holiday, 
on the principle, perhaps, that this might be 
the last time and that since life was to be short 
it should be merry. People laughed easily 
and at nothing, and felt silly and guilty after 
they had laughed and took another drink. 

No! London is not an attractive place in 
war time. WeU, you can't blame the Londoners 
for anything they do or don't do. Late in 

218 



BACK TO BLIGHTY 

October I experienced my first air raid, and 
after it was over I felt that anyone that had 
that sort of thing to look forward to as a daily 
possibility was entitled to get as full of Haig 
and Haig as he could hold, and good luck to 
him. 

I had been to a picture show, and as I came 
out about nine o'clock I found the streets 
full of people who were running here and there 
and shouting a good deal. It was pretty dark 
and the automobiles dashing around tooting 
their horns made a terrific din. I did n't know 
what was up until I came across a poUceman 
imder one of the few hooded street Hghts. He 
had a sandwich board on him sa)ang, "TAKE 
COVER." 

Down the road I saw a mass of people pouring 
down into the Goodge Street imderground 
station and I Ht out for that place fast. Just 
before I got there I heard the anti-aircraft 
guns begin to go off. I stopped for a minute 
and listened. 

219 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

Yap — yap — yap — went the Archies. And 
then away o£f there on the edge of the town, 
BOO-0-O-OM! Just like that. A bomb of 
course. I did n^t waste any time. I ducked 
down into that underground station like a 
rabbit into a hole. I don't fancy air raids. 
They give me the fantods. I have written 
about being bombed from airplanes at the 
front and in the hospital. I had the same 
feeling here that each bomb was going to seek 
me out as a personal victim; and the deeper I 
got down in the ground the better I liked it. 

On the platform, which was larger and deeper 
under ground than in the American subways, 
I foimd as many as two thousand people. They 
were packed in and stood there patiently 
waiting for the trouble to be over. I stayed 
imtil eleven o'clock and then went up to the 
street. The anti-aircraft guns had stopped, 
and I supposed that everything was all right. 
I strolled around for a while and was not far 
from Piccadilly Circus about half-past eleven 

220 



BACK TO BLIGHTY 

when the anti-aircraft guns began barking 
again, and before I had a chance to hunt cover 
two bombs fell in Piccadilly not three hundred 
yards from where I stood. I '11 take that back. 
I wasn't standing. I was hitting the high 
places one-fifth of a second after the first ear- 
spHtting, earth-shaking crash. When the second 
bomb Ht I was making faster time than I ever 
did in the old days on the Bailey Hose Team 
or on the track. I did n't know where I was 
going, but I was on my way; and soon I found 
another tube entrance and went down it on my 
ear. I stayed there until the Boy Scouts 
sounded "All Clear" on the bugles. 

The first thing in the morning I visited 
Piccadilly Circus to see what had happened. 
It was a plenty. The bombs which had been 
dropped from Zeps had hit the curbing. There 
were two holes that you could have put a 
street-car into. All windows had been smashed 
for hundreds of yards around. It was reported 
that fourteen people were killed. As a matter 

221 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

of fact there must have been scores of dead. 
I snooped around there all day, and that night 
I found a woman who had been one of the first 
on the scene who said that she knew that at 
least thirty had died. 

As showing the force of the explosion of one 
of those sixty-pound pear-shaped bombs, here 
is what happened to the front of a hotel which 
was directly opposite the landing-place of 
one. The revolving door was torn out of its 
sockets and carried back a hundred feet along 
a corridor, sweeping up seven people who were 
iQ the way and killiQg them all. I can endorse 
the statement of anybody that a Zep raid in 
London is far from pleasant. I went through 
six while I was iq London. 

On the day my discharge came I strolled, 
into the Union Jack Club where I knew the 
clerk and was known by him to be a Yank. 

"Well,'' he said to me, "what do you think 
of London?" 

"I came here to see your sights," I told 

222 



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BACK TO BLIGHTY 

him. "Ever since I have been here the visi- 
biHty has been low. I went out to have a look 
at the Nelson Column and can't see the top 
half of it for the smoke. I have n't been able 
to see across the Thames since I came. Nights 
I can't see three feet ahead of me. 

" Somebody told me that Petticoat Lane was 
one of the sights of London. The day I was 
there I saw three old Janes buying fish and a 
guy selling plate poHsh. Nothing more exciting 
than that. I've seen your Zoological Gardens^ 
and I find that the Bronx Park has them faded. 
When you get your haircut you never shave 
your neck and the hair hangs down your back. 
Three minutes off the Strand and you can 
hear the sparrows talking on the roof. No, 
brother," says I, "I'll leave little old Limnon 
for those that love it. Me for Boston, 
Mass." 

And with that I went out and bought my 
ticket for God's country. Blighty may be all 
right for someone who is used to it. To me 

223 



SHELLPROOF MACK 

it was a way-station to the U. S. A., where I am 
going to stop until I get the chance, if they 
will let me, to go over there and fight imder 
the STARS AND STRIPES. 



224 



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